Rumble CEO Wants to Become ‘Less Dependent’ on Politics, but Sees 2024 as its ‘Super Bowl’
Right Wing Biz Watch
By David Lieberman, May 22, 2023
Rumble loves right wing politics. But the Peter Thiel-backed video platform, which is sometimes called a right wing YouTube, wants to balance its grievance-based content with sports and pop culture for young men and announced two deals last week to underscore that point.
The company said it will stream “The Kai ‘N Speed Show” featuring social media stars Kai Cenant and IShowSpeed. Both have frequently run afoul of platforms including Twitch and YouTube for sexist comments and other terms-of-service violations.
Rumble also bought Callin, a social audio platform similar to Clubhouse, in a deal that will add co-founder David Sacks to the video company’s board. Last year The New Republic described the venture capitalist and former PayPal COO as “a regular across conservative media and on Twitter” who “exerts a growing influence in the political battles playing out in the tech industry.”
Rumble disclosed last Friday that it paid Callin’s owners one million shares of its stock, with an additional 1.5 million if the company achieves “four separate milestones.” Rumble’s stock price closed Friday at $9.70 a share.
The deals “will make us less dependent on political news cycles and elections which can affect the stability of KPIs” – an acronym for key performance indicators – CEO Chris Pavlovski told Wall Street analysts.
“Notable Decline”
The first three months of 2023 saw a “notable decline” in monthly active users (MAUs) vs. the last three months of 2022, he said, while many who were new to Rumble “did not return to the platform.”
MAUs, at 48 million, dropped 40% although the average Minutes Watched Per Month slid 2.7% to 10.8 billion.
Pavlovski attributed the drop in the first quarter to the platform’s “incredible overperformance” around the 2022 mid-term elections. For example, right wing commentator Steven Crowder, who has more than 1.2 million followers on Rumble, had “record traffic around Election Day [but] produced limited content in the first two months of 2023.”
Crowder came to Rumble after being suspended from YouTube several times for violating its rules against hate speech. He continues to support Infowars’ Alex Jones even after juries in Connecticut and Texas found him guilty of defamation for spreading a lie that the 2012 murder of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was a hoax.
Discussing Cenant and IShowSpeed, Pavlovski told analysts that “no one is bigger at what they do,” and if any were unfamiliar with them “don’t worry, your kids are. And so are advertisers.”
Twitch has suspended Cenant several times, including in April when the 21-year-old was accused of engaging in “repeated explicit simulated activity.”
IShowSpeed, the stage name for 18-year-old Darren Watkins Jr., has a track record of misogynistic comments that ran afoul of other platforms including Sky Sports, which dropped him in November. That same month he apologized for having promoted an alleged cryptocurrency scam.
Inflection Point
Rumble’s announcements came as it announced that it lost $28.7 million in the first quarter on revenues of $17.6 million. In the same period last year, it recorded a $3.9 million loss on $4.0 million in revenues.
The company went public in September when it merged with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that had raised $400 million from investors.
Pavlovski said that his company will continue to use “a substantial portion” of its funds to acquire content. The strategy “may not maximize profitability in the immediate term,” he added, but “will position our business for the long run.”
The 2024 election could be an inflection point. “I look at that as being our Super Bowl,” the CEO said in an interview.
He hopes to kick things off in August: the Republican National Committee agreed in April to let Rumble offer the first GOP presidential debate.
Rumble has close ties to Donald Trump and his family. The company uses the former president’s Truth Social to communicate with shareholders. Early this year it signed a podcast deal with Donald Trump Jr. and launched a twice-a-week program with his girlfriend, “The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show.” The Trump Media & Technology Company has agreed to use Rumble’s planned cloud services.
Rumble’s content deals with guaranteed payments oblige it to spend about $164 million – including $102 million committed over the last two months.
But the company also has creator agreements tied to performance with outlays that Pavlovski said are “difficult to anticipate” but “could be substantial.”
Wall Street was unimpressed. Rumble’s stock price declined 3.7%, to $9.62 a share. the day after the earnings release.
Right Wing Biz Watch is a ongoing series of articles examining the business and finances of right wing media. Its author, David Lieberman, covered the media business full time for 30 years at USA Today and other publications before joining The New School as an Associate Professor in its graduate Media Management program.
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Rumble has close ties to Donald Trump and his family. The company uses the former president’s Truth Social to communicate with shareholders. Rumble just announced that it lost $28.7 million on revenues of $17.6 million in the first quarter.
