Comedian Larry David expresses remorse for participating in the Super Bowl ad for FTX and indicates a willingness to join the class action lawsuit against him and other celebrities.
Renowned for his blunt candor, Larry David is finally addressing his notorious appearance in a 2022 Super Bowl ad for FTX. Reflecting on the experience, the comedian acknowledges that in hindsight, his decision to endorse the now-collapsed crypto exchange was pretty, pretty, pretty bad.
David recalled the incident during the premiere of the last season of his HBO series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, earlier this week.“I asked people—friends of mine who were well versed in this stuff—’Should I do this ad? Is there anything wrong with this, with me doing this? Is this okay?’”
“And they said, ‘Yeah, this is totally on the up and up… Do it.’ So like an idiot, I did it.”
David didn’t provide further details about the trusted cryptocurrency advisors who, according to him, persuaded him to support FTX during the height of the exchange’s popularity in 2022.
However, it’s evident that the creator of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” deeply regrets the decision, which, in the wake of FTX’s dramatic collapse mere months after the Super Bowl ad aired, remains a source of ongoing distress for him.
In the aftermath of FTX’s sudden bankruptcy filing in November 2022, triggered by the revelation of significant discrepancies in the company’s financial records, Larry David, along with fellow celebrity endorsers like Tom Brady and Shaquille O’Neal, found themselves embroiled in a class action lawsuit. The suit alleged that these high-profile figures, in collaboration with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, participated in a “fraudulent scheme” to exploit inexperienced investors. David openly acknowledged this lawsuit on the red carpet recently, appearing to support its allegations. “I’m in a class action lawsuit, which I would love to be part of,” he told the Associated Press, “Because part of my salary was in crypto—so I lost a lot of money.”
According to a recent biography of Bankman-Fried by author Michael Lewis, FTX paid David $10 million for his appearance in the company’s 150-second Super Bowl advertisement. However, neither David nor FTX has confirmed the portion of this payment made in cryptocurrency.
In the FTX advertisement, Larry David humorously critiques various historical inventions, including the wheel, the toilet, and the lightbulb, using his signature jaded skepticism. He concludes the ad by similarly mocking FTX, suggesting that the exchange could be as groundbreaking as the inventions he dismissed. Notably, David is the sole celebrity endorser in the FTX commercials to explicitly advise against using the app. However, the ongoing FTX class action lawsuit does not emphasize this distinction, given the ironic tone of the ad.
