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Firy Inc. (NYSE: FIRY), the holding company formerly known as Skillz Inc., disclosed in a September 15 SEC filing that Avenue Capital Group chairman Marc Lasry will join its board effective October 1, 2026, filling the seat vacated by director Gary Vecchiarelli. Vecchiarelli notified the board on September 11 of his intent to resign as a director and from the audit and compensation committees, Firy said in the Form 8-K.
The filing states Vecchiarelli's departure "is not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company's operations, policies or practices." A press release furnished with the same filing says Vecchiarelli will move into a board advisor role once his director term ends on October 1.
The board appointed Lasry on September 12, acting on a recommendation from its Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. He has not been named to any board committee. The board determined he is independent under New York Stock Exchange rules, and the filing states there is no arrangement or understanding tied to his appointment, no family relationship with any director or officer, and no related-party transaction reportable under Item 404(a) of Regulation S-K. He will receive standard non-employee director pay and sign the company's standard indemnification agreement.
Lasry has spent more than 42 years in credit investing. He co-founded Avenue Capital Group in 1995 and remains its chairman and chief executive, running a roughly $9.2 billion firm focused on specialty lending and opportunistic credit, according to the press release. Earlier in his career he managed capital for Amroc Investments, co-led Cowen & Company's bankruptcy and corporate reorganization practice, and practiced bankruptcy law at Angel & Frankel after clerking for Edward Ryan, then chief bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of New York. He holds a B.A. in history from Clark University and a J.D. from New York Law School.
Lasry's tie to the company predates its current name. He put money into Skillz's $15 million Series B round in September 2015, alongside Wildcat Capital Management and The Kraft Group, and has "stayed close to the Company's development" since, Firy CEO and founder Andrew Paradise said in the release. "I believe that the FIRY team led by Andrew has reset the Company's cost structure, strengthened the balance sheet and built a fast-growing AI ad-tech business alongside the competition platform they invented," Lasry said in the same release.
He is also known outside finance as a former co-owner of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, a stake he held from 2014 until he sold his roughly 25% share to Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam in a deal that valued the team near $3.5 billion, completed in 2023. That same year, Avenue Capital launched the Avenue Sports Fund, a vehicle dedicated to sports investing.
Skillz, the real-money mobile esports platform, completed its rename to Firy Inc. on June 18 and began trading under the FIRY ticker on June 22. Firy now operates as a holding company over three units: Skillz, the original competitive mobile gaming platform founded in 2012, RZR, an AI-powered performance marketing business, and Beamable, a developer backend and LiveOps infrastructure provider.
Vecchiarelli, who joined the Skillz board on December 29, 2025 after previously consulting for the company, brought direct gaming-finance credentials the rest of the board largely lacks: he was chief financial officer of Galaxy Gaming from 2012 to 2016 and senior vice president of finance at Golden Entertainment from 2017 to 2019, both regulated casino gaming companies. He is currently president and chief financial officer of bitcoin miner CleanSpark. His exit adds to a busy year for gaming finance leadership, following IGT's appointment of Adam Chibib as chief financial officer and NorthStar Gaming's CFO exit alongside a new chief executive in August. The 8-K was signed by Todd A. Valli, Firy's chief accounting officer.
The compensation committee just lost half its members
Firy's most recent proxy, filed April 30, 2026, lists only two names on its compensation committee: chair Henry Hoffman and Vecchiarelli. His departure, without a committee reassignment for Lasry, leaves that committee down to a single member just as the board adds a credit investor with three decades of capital-markets range but no operating history in regulated gaming, a trade that swaps hands-on casino-finance oversight for balance-sheet weight and a decade-long relationship with the company itself.