FaZe Banks, HecZ and Nadeshot announce Call of Duty LAN

Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag, CEO of 100 Thieves, Hector ‘HecZ’ Rodriguez, CEO of OpTic, and Richard ‘FaZe Banks’ Bengtson, CEO of FaZe Clan, have announced a Call of Duty competition.

The Founding Fathers LAN tournament will include several Call of Duty games and game modes and will feature more than a dozen creators, current and former players, and staff from the three North American organisations.

The Founding Fathers tournament was created out of an online exchange between Nadeshot and Banks on social media. The ‘banter’ between the CEOs resulted in them reaching out to HecZ to create a LAN tournament in Call of Duty that will include notable players and staff from all three organisations.

The tournament is set to take place on May 30th, but will not be open to the public. The organisers have stated that the tournament will ‘take place from an undisclosed location’, but will be streamed by creators from all three companies across their social media channels.

Interestingly, the tournament will see three separate matches played. First, a 4v4 match will take place in Modern Warfare 2, a game released in late 2009, whilst the second 4v4 match will take place in Black Ops 2, a slightly newer Call of Duty released in 2012. The two matches will serve as build-up for the main event, a one-on-one matchup between Nadeshot and Banks in Modern Warfare 2.

The tournament comes at an interesting time for FaZe Clan. The company was acquired by GameSquare in late 2023, and Bengtson has since returned to guide the company as CEO. In May 2024, GameSquare launched FaZe Media, a company that will handle FaZe’s IP. Bengston was joined in the FaZe Media Board by Matt Kalish, President and Co-Founder of fantasy sports platform DraftKings, after Kalish made an $11m (~£8.68m) investment into the company.