Lil Yachty joins FaZe Clan, the Supreme of e-sports

  News, Rassegna Stampa
image_pdfimage_print

Lil Yachty is an award-nominated rapper whose songs have generated him millions of fans around the world. He’s also the newest member of FaZe Clan, a gaming collective that is quickly becoming the Supreme of e-sports.

The team officially welcomed Lil Yachty to FaZe Clan during the rapper’s performance at the Rolling Loud festival this past weekend. Yachty invited a number of FaZe members, including RiceGum (a YouTube creator with more than 10 million subscribers) and leader Richard “FaZe Banks” Bengtson up on stage. They then presented him with his own shirt, welcoming “FaZe Boat” to the group. It’s unclear if Yachty has his own line of merchandise coming, or what his exact role within FaZe Clan will be, but he is 100 percent invested in the organization, according to a recent interview, seen below.

Although Yachty is the newest celebrity to team up with FaZe Clan, he’s certainly not the first. Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster has partnered with FaZe Clan and secured his own merchandising line, and went on the international European road trip, called Gumball 3000.

FaZe Clan started in 2010 as a gaming clan that produced elaborate “trickshot” Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II videos on YouTube, and expanded into competitive play a couple of years later with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It wasn’t until 2016 when FaZe Clan’s owners — Thomas Oliveira, Yousef Abdelfattah, and Nordan Shat — decided to buy a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team that FaZe Clan really started getting into e-sports. Still, they never forgot their YouTube roots.

As FaZe Clan has grown over the years, the gaming clan has morphed into a luxury entertainment brand. FaZe Clan members live in a giant mansion in Hollywood Hills, living side by side with Bengtson’s other YouTube initiative, Clout Gang (a group of popular YouTube vloggers). They maintain personal YouTube channels and Twitch accounts with millions of subscribers. They’ve launched their own merchandise lines, and dropped diss tracks with some of the best on YouTube.

FaZe Clan became the gaming equivalent of a streetwear lifestyle brand; they’re essentially the Supreme of e-sports.

Much like Supreme, a clothing line built on the promise of hype and widely acknowledged coolness, FaZe Clan seems more like a personality and merchandise-focused endeavor than a traditional e-sports brand. FaZe Clan has more in common with traditional streetwear companies than mega e-sports organizations like Evil Geniuses and Cloud9.

FaZe Clan isn’t the only collective teaming up with celebrities to introduce streetwear lifestyle branding to the gaming community. E-sports and lifestyle brand 100 Thieves made headlines recently after Drake and producer Scooter Braun became co-owners of the collective. Much like FaZe Clan and its founding origins, which are rooted in YouTube personality stardom, 100 Thieves was started by Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, an extremely popular YouTube creator.

Also like FaZe Clan, 100 Thieves’ core objective is to produce a line of merchandise akin to other popular streetwear lifestyle apparel. The goal doesn’t seem to be to necessarily win major e-sports tournaments so much as to jump on gaming’s massive audience and player base, and provide a streetwear aesthetic they can wear while out. Merchandising, as YouTube creators know, is everything.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/18/18146782/faze-clan-lil-yachty-supreme-100thieves-drake-esports-fortnite