Motorsport Games Entire Board Of Directors Have Resigned

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The Motorsport Games Odyssey keeps on continuing. And it keeps on getting weirder. In the latest stroke of madness, the entire board of directors resigned due to a "proposal to raise additional capital".

As if the story of Motorsport Games couldn't get any more complicated and convoluted, today's news seems to top everything off.

As the American company tries to find a way to raise more capital, its parent company Motorsport Network seems to have made such an outrageous proposal that the entire board of directors have resigned.

But first, a little lesson in company structure and stocks:

What is a Board of Directors?​

A board of directors (B of D) is the governing body of a company, elected by shareholders in the case of public companies to set strategy and oversee management. The board typically meets at regular intervals. Every public company must have a board of directors. - Investopedia
So a few key facts are:
  • The board of directors of a public company is elected by shareholders.
  • The board makes key decisions on issues such as mergers and dividends, hires senior managers, and sets their pay.
  • Board of directors candidates can be nominated by the company's nominations committee or by outsiders seeking change.
  • The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq require listed companies to have a majority of outside, or independent, directors on their board.
Now the last of these points might prove troublesome for the company yet, as the current Board of Directors, which seems to be made up of 1 person appointed by Motorsport Network, is no longer NASDAQ compliant.

This means that, should no solution be found in the near future, Motorsport Games could be delisted from NASDAQ.

Why being delisted is bad.​

If a company has been delisted, it is no longer trading on a major exchange, but the stockholders are not stripped of their status as owners. The stock still exists, and they still own the shares; however, delisting often results in a significant or total devaluing of a company's share value.

Therefore, although a shareholder's ownership of a company does not decrease after a company is delisted, that ownership may become worth much less, or, in some cases, it may lose its entire value.

As a shareholder, you should seriously revisit your investment decision in a company that has become delisted. In many cases, it may be better to cut your losses. A firm unable to meet the listing requirements of the exchange upon which it is traded is quite obviously not in a great position. - Investopedia

So, basically, if a company is delisted from NASDAQ, the stock value tends to drop dramatically. Meaning some investors or shareholders might think sooner rather than later to "get off the sinking ship".

So to keep a TL;DR of everything: This is pretty bad.

After saving themselves from delisting with a 1-to-10 stock split, they are now at risk again.

At this point, what do you think of this odyssey that Motorsport Games is going through? Is the company saveable? And how do you think will rFactor 2 be affected? Let us know in the comments down below!
About author
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

Comments

I can.

Ugh. Straight up theft. They're going to stiff employees their wages due and then they do this. Might as well get a half hour infomercial showing Dmitri partying on a yacht and lighting cigars with $100 bills...

How's Traxion.gg involved? I not always up on things...

(Ironically, I simrace under the name Ricky van Buren, so the RVB on the porsche above makes me giggle)
 
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I can.


Ugh. Straight up theft. They're going to stiff employees their wages due and then they do this. Might as well get a half hour infomercial showing Dmitri partying on a yacht and lighting cigars with $100 bills...

How's Traxion.gg involved? I not always up on things...

(Ironically, I simrace under the name Ricky van Buren, so the RVB on the porsche above makes me giggle)
Traxion was a sim racing website started by Motorsport Network/Motorsport Games.

Within three days of the website going live in 2021, they were sponsoring a NASCAR Cup car.

Feb 25th, 2021

Feb 28th, 2021
 
how dare they run a business to turn a profit!
;)
they sold over 12 million copies of the original game and made quite a tidy sum without doing that. and sold plenty of DLC as well. The game is what it is today because they didn't do that. this isn't about being profitable or not, the game will almost certainly be quite profitable either way. It's about pursuing monetization to the point it negatively impacts the final product and kills of a very significant aspect of the game and potentially the community that is associated with that part of the game.
 
they sold over 12 million copies of the original game and made quite a tidy sum without doing that. and sold plenty of DLC as well. The game is what it is today because they didn't do that. this isn't about being profitable or not, the game will almost certainly be quite profitable either way. It's about pursuing monetization to the point it negatively impacts the final product and kills of a very significant aspect of the game and potentially the community that is associated with that part of the game.
Plus, at some point it becomes less of an enterprise and more of a Ponzi scheme. They use past licenses to get new licenses, so they can use the value of those licenses as "intangible assets". And at some point, upper management realizes that they are not going to be able to deliver and flip the switch from hopeful but earnest, to save whatever value I can pull out of this thing...
 
The bottom line is ... the bottom line controls everything. It is all about dividends. Modern corporations prefer selling manure at $20 per unit profit than gold at $10 per unit profit. It is rare to find one for which product is more important than profit.
 
I'm looking at the rF2 content and seeing all that BTCC content being dripped to the community and am more confident than ever that we're never seeing a MSG BTCC game.

We should be thankful that the S397 crew, who probably knows this too, lobbied to have this in our hands sooner than never...
 

"Based on the cash and cash equivalents available as of October 31, 2022, and the Company’s average cash burn, we do not believe we have sufficient cash on hand to fund our operations for the remainder of 2022 and that additional funding will be required in order to continue operations"

Or a savior appears, or the sister company dump another millions of dollars on this, or it's over before 2023.
 
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The MSG statement has all the sincerity of an Electronic Arts development studio acquisition press release.
Based on the surrounding landscape, he's already lying through his teeth.

NASCAR Heat 5 was supposed to receive a 2022 DLC pack. They announced it, announced it has been delayed, and have gone super quiet.

The BTCC game, they admitted in their investor call that they're not working on it. Just NASCAR, Indy, and WEC.

However, Reiza's last second audible in yanking the IR-18 out of Racing America Pt. 3, implies they have partnered with IndyCar and will release it under it's own, licensed pack. Which means Indy is jumping ship from MSGM, which means no IndyCar game from MSGM.

Which means the plans have very obviously changed.
 
However, Reiza's last second audible in yanking the IR-18 out of Racing America Pt. 3, implies they have partnered with IndyCar and will release it under it's own, licensed pack. Which means Indy is jumping ship from MSGM, which means no IndyCar game from MSGM.
Still not confirmed. While we hope it will be part of Reiza dlcs on the other hand it is still on hold.
 
Premium
I'd rather see Reiza package it up as a stand alone game.

Even if some generic model is dumped into AMS2.

If we could have a title from Reiza with the focus that Kunos had making ACC......God damn
 
The thing is being in a position where your revenues are 1.5M and you lose 6-8M in a quarter isn't consistent with a natural situation for a mature almost obsolete platform.
It is more consistent with an up and coming endeavor like Rennsport.
What is not clear is why someone would pour a lot of money into something that is already well matured and burning cash like crazy.
I doubt very much that firing people (or "optimizing" costs as they are saying in a more polite way) is the solution to this unbalance.
Assuming even Motorsports Network can afford the 15-20M toll every year why would they want to do that?
Secondly it is obvious that the release of products is late and therefore the costs will remain there for the foreseeable future without the corresponding cash flow inwards.
Forcing the IP owners into fighting their way out of this by lawyers isn't great either because the entire simracing industry will take a reputation hit from this.
I think some times admitting something isn't working and folding or anyway deeply restructuring to jettison the costly licenses and unachievable "grandeur" plans is better than this slow death. But that is me.
 
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Looks like somebody decided to clean old debts,etc with controlled bankruptcy, which is very popular in nowadays, i don't think they are going anywhere, especially now.
 
Apparently the "optimising costs" thing involves not being able to afford a new license for Silverstone, which will now be janked from the rFactor 2 workshop.
 
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