- Joined
- Jul 8, 2019
From Rumble's POV, signing Nick kinda made business sense at the time. He had huge numbers from the Johnny Depp case, he had previously done huge numbers with Rittenhouse, and ok numbers on other trials. The law and crime (heh) segment of the viewing population does huge numbers on youtube and still does well on cable. It's a market and demo you want on your video website. Also, Nick had been rather publicly kicked off youtube, and while he was reinstated, it was clear he was disgruntled.
Rumble's failure was in having, apparently, very little to no conditions on the creator's side of the contract. Most creators have a need to perform because they aren't beneficiaries of a trust fund, and if they're on any drugs, it's usually uppers. Once they have 10,000-100,000 viewers on peak, they usually build up a staff around them to support the enterprise. There's a fair amount of social incentive (keeping your employees fed), in addition to the financial one (making dat keesh).
But WHOA BUDDY! Not Nick Rekieta. He took the money and ran, and apparently the schmucks at Rumble either didn't have any way to cancel the contract for failure to perform, or they just decided it would be cheaper to run the contract out than risk litigation.
Which... seeing how Nick has been with Aaron, that was probably the right move on their part, if this was the case. Nick wasn't barred from practicing law at that point, and since he wasn't streaming, he had nearly infinite time to cause issues. But he also had nearly infinite drugs at that point, which wasn't 100% obvious in 2023. The cheaper route was almost certainly running out the clock, which they did.
Hopefully the Rumble contracts that continue to exist have some performance goals attached to them. But given they continue to keep Ralph on their platform, I'm not so sure of that.
Rumble's failure was in having, apparently, very little to no conditions on the creator's side of the contract. Most creators have a need to perform because they aren't beneficiaries of a trust fund, and if they're on any drugs, it's usually uppers. Once they have 10,000-100,000 viewers on peak, they usually build up a staff around them to support the enterprise. There's a fair amount of social incentive (keeping your employees fed), in addition to the financial one (making dat keesh).
But WHOA BUDDY! Not Nick Rekieta. He took the money and ran, and apparently the schmucks at Rumble either didn't have any way to cancel the contract for failure to perform, or they just decided it would be cheaper to run the contract out than risk litigation.
Which... seeing how Nick has been with Aaron, that was probably the right move on their part, if this was the case. Nick wasn't barred from practicing law at that point, and since he wasn't streaming, he had nearly infinite time to cause issues. But he also had nearly infinite drugs at that point, which wasn't 100% obvious in 2023. The cheaper route was almost certainly running out the clock, which they did.
Hopefully the Rumble contracts that continue to exist have some performance goals attached to them. But given they continue to keep Ralph on their platform, I'm not so sure of that.