(The Hill) – Social media platform Rumble has offered Joe Rogan $100 million to bring his popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” to its video platform amid controversy surrounding his show on Spotify.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski wrote in an open letter on Monday that he stands with Rogan, who is facing blowback for COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his show and his past use of racial slurs.
“We stand with you, your guests, and your legion of fans in desire for real conversation,” Pavlovski said in his letter.
“So we’d like to offer you 100 million reasons to make the world a better place. How about you bring all your shows to Rumble, both old and new, with no censorship, for 100 million bucks over four years?” he added.
“This is our chance to save the world. And yes, this is totally legit,” Pavlovski said.
Rogan signed an exclusive deal with Spotify in 2020 that was reportedly worth more than $100 million and included the show’s library dating back 11 years.
The former host of the TV reality series “Fear Factor” has been the center of controversy in recent weeks, forcing Spotify to defend the lucrative relationship.
Musicians Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and others recently removed their music catalogs from the streaming platform in protest of Rogan spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine.
India Arie also pulled her music and shared on social media a compilation video of Rogan saying the n-word around 20 times in old episodes of his podcast.
Spotify said that Rogan then decided to remove more than 70 episodes from the podcast library.
Rogan apologized for the racist remarks in a video on Instagram over the weekend.
“I can’t go back in time and change what I said, I wish I could, obviously that’s not possible, but I do hope this could be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn’t realize how offensive that word could be coming out of a white person’s mouth, in context or out of context.”
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said Rogan’s comments were “hurtful” but argued that silencing people was not the proper response, instead promising to invest in a greater diversity of voices on the platform.
