How Teen Gamers Built a Billion Dollar Business

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

News, Daily News, Business News

4.2 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2010, a handful of teenage boys started posting gaming montages on YouTube, under the name FaZe Clan. More than a decade later, the group is a global e-sports and lifestyle brand worth more than a billion dollars on the Nasdaq. CEO Lee Trink and founding FaZe Clan member Yousef Abdelfattah — better known as FaZe Apex — explain how the company got there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A little over a decade ago, a teenager named Yusif Abdel Fata started watching videos
0:10.4	on YouTube, a group of boys playing video games.
0:19.3	The boys called themselves FaZe Clan.
0:21.5	They mostly played first-person shooter games like Call of Duty.
0:26.2	A lot of people posted video game highlights on YouTube, but what made these guys different
0:30.8	was how they played.
0:33.0	Most people played to win.
0:34.9	FaZe Clan played to look cool.
0:39.1	It's all about flashy stuff.
0:40.8	It was just freestyle-like tricks and like, it was all skill.
0:44.8	It was all like trying to like, do things that people have never done before, so they
0:48.9	were basically creating a new way to play the game.
0:51.6	Woohoo!
0:52.6	Woo!
0:53.6	Woohoo!
0:54.6	Why are you so good, dude?
0:55.6	Honestly, you are annoyingly amazing at this game.
1:00.6	The best way to compare it is like the Harlem Globetrotters, like people that have crazy
1:12.9	skills, but they're not professional players in the sport.
1:16.8	Yusif started DMing one of FaZe dreamers.
1:19.4	In 2011, when he was 14, he got invited to join the group.
1:25.5	You can compare it to a kid's childhood dream of playing basketball with LeBron, for example.
	...

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