Sources: Jason Lake looking to reacquire Complexity from GameSquare

The North American entrepreneur wants to take the organization off GameSquare’s hands as the Jerry Jones-backed company is in the final stages of acquiring FaZe Clan.

Complexity CEO and founder Jason Lake is trying to find investors to buy the North American organization from GameSquare, sources with knowledge of the situation told HLTV. This comes just two months after GameSquare reached an agreement for the acquisition of FaZe Clan, raising alarm bells in the Counter-Strike scene about a potential conflict of interest between the two teams.

On October 20, it was announced that GameSquare had reached a “definitive agreement” to purchase FaZe Clan in an all-stock transaction. The deal was valued at approximately $17 million, according to Bloomberg.

FaZe and Complexity compete in many of the same Counter-Strike tournaments, with both teams also partnered with ESL and BLAST, the two biggest event organisers in the game. ESL told HLTV in October that it was “examining the potential implications” that the deal might have on the teams’ participation in its member events and its business relations.

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FaZe to be acquired by Complexity parent company GameSquare

BLAST Commissioner Andrew Haworth told HLTV last week, in an interview that will be published later this month, that the company was monitoring the situation and that the deal, as it was initially presented, posed “challenges of competitive integrity.”

Sources told HLTV that Lake has been on a roadshow to attract investors to finance the acquisition of Complexity, with recent trips to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. He was at the Etihad Arena during the final two days of the BLAST Premier World Final while Complexity’s team competed at ESL Challenger Atlanta.

Initially, FaZe Clan and GameSquare planned to close the acquisition in Q4 2023. However, sources said that the deal could still take months to complete, which would give Lake a window to secure the necessary funding to buy back Complexity while the two organizations remain separate entities.

If Lake manages to find enough support for the deal, it will mark the second time that he buys back Complexity, the organization he founded in 2003. At the end of that decade, he reacquired Complexity from media company DirecTV following the collapse of the Championship Gaming Series.

In 2017, Lake sold a majority stake in Complexity to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and real estate investor John Goff. Four years later, GameSquare acquired Complexity in a $27 million, all-stock deal. As a result, the Jones family, the Goff family, and Lake became significant shareholders in GameSquare, with a combined 47 percent ownership in the publicly traded Canadian company.

Complexity's Counter-Strike team is currently ranked eighth in the world after a good run of results in CS2, including a second place at IEM Sydney and a semi-final appearance at the BLAST Premier Fall Final.

The organization also fields teams in Rocket League, Halo, Madden, Apex Legends, and Valorant, and supports a number of content creators, most notably Tim ‘Timthetatman’ Betar, who became a part owner in GameSquare after his recruitment in September 2021.

Contacted by HLTV, Lake declined to comment.