It’s a turbulent time for League of Fat Bastards, the cigar brand launched in 2024 with the intent of raising money and awareness for men’s mental health. Today, Adam Levine, the company’s founder, informed halfwheel that he has put the company up for sale.
In September, Ferdinand Piet, who oversaw the company’s international sales, announced he had left the company. A week later, a U.S.-based sales representative of League of Fat Bastards began informing retailers that he was no longer at the company because League of Fat Bastards had paused operations as it evaluated its long-term strategy.
According to a text obtained by halfwheel, the representative said the company was no longer accepting or fulfilling orders from retailers. Levine disputed that, saying the company was still selling to large catalog retailers but had stopped opening up new accounts.
He added that, as of Oct. 7, the company still had cigars in a warehouse to fulfill orders from those retailers but did not say how long that inventory would last, and did not reply to a question about whether or not the company had orders in for more cigars. The company had its core line cigars produced by Fábrica de Tabacos Joya de Nicaragua S.A.
Earlier this month, Levine told halfwheel that he was the only one still working for the company.
As halfwheel has worked in the last month to try to report on the various changes at League of Fat Bastards, there have been some shifts in how Levine described his plans for his company. At one point, Levine seemed interested in partnering with a different company, using League of Fat Bastards as a “socially focused” brand that could complement a more traditional portfolio.
Earlier this week, halfwheel asked Levine additional questions. Today, he replied by saying he made the decision to sell the company. No valuation was given.
“The founder is stepping back from leading the business, and the brand now needs a production and distribution platform its current owners are not positioned to build out further,” the company wrote in a document Levine provided to halfwheel. “Everything that took two and a half years to establish the brand, the community, the trade relationships, is intact and transfers. It is worth considerably more in the hands of an operator who already has that infrastructure in place.”
The document notes that Levine would be open to providing ongoing assistance to the company acquiring League of Fat Bastards, including serving as a global brand ambassador.
The company launched in March 2024 with the mission of using cigars to start conversations about men’s mental health, something that Levine has said he has struggled with in his life. He said he wanted to use cigars as a vehicle to encourage real conversations amongst a brotherhood of cigar smokers that would occur in trusted, confidential environments.
It debuted with one line called Serie L, the first of what was to be four lines named for the company’s acronym. Serie O was released in November 2024 and was to be followed by Serie F and Serie B. Its portfolio also included Skinny Bastarda, a line developed by Patricia and Raquel Quesada to celebrate the women of the cigar industry. It also released Wingman, its first limited edition, which came out in November 2025.
League of Fat Bastards also included two very different non-cigar projects.
Earlier this month, Levine said he was focusing on continuing to grow The League, a subscription service that includes an online community, events and personalized growth plans for members, though he did not provide numbers as to membership. According to the website, 151 of the 250 spots for Charter Founding Members have been claimed.
Late last year, the company announced a line of non-alcoholic beer. Following its launch, Levine said that its manufacturing partner closed up shop overnight, resulting in him having to find a new production partner, among other issues, including compliance issues and having stock in the market that wasn’t able to be sold. “It’s been a major commercial issue for us to deal with,” Levine said.
From its inception, the company promoted that it would donate 40 percent of its net profits to supporting mental health, though it does not appear that specific organizations or initiatives have been identified as having received support from the company, nor has any amount been publicly announced as having been donated. This appears to be due in large part to the fact that the company has been operating at losses of more than $824,000 in 2024 and $1.12 million in 2025, according to filings that the company made as it sought investments earlier this year.
In April 2026, when LOFB International, LLC announced a fundraising round, that valued the company at an eye-popping $65 million as it sought to raise $1.235 million during its SAFE fundraising round. Levine said that while the fundraising was “well supported,” it did not meet the internal minimum raise threshold for growth plans, and as such, the escrowed funds were returned to investors. The minimum amount needed to move forward with the fundraising round was $25,000, with individual investors able to take part for a minimum of $500.
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Adam Levine
League of Fat Bastards
