Steven Crowder Signs With Rumble Following Messy Public Spat with The Daily Wire
Following a bitter public dispute with The Daily Wire, political commentator Steven Crowder announced his show will be exclusively streamed on Rumble.
The partnership came months after Crowder burned many bridges with some of the biggest names in conservative media including Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens.
Back in December 2022 Crowder amicably parted ways with The Blaze, a political commentary platform that housed his show Louder with Crowder for several years.
In January 2023, Crowder released a YouTube video entitled It’s time to stop… in which he railed against unfair media contracts that he had been offered.
He accused “conservative media giants” of being in bed with companies like YouTube and Big Tech platforms who, in Crowder’s eyes, are fighting to silence independent voices.
Crowder waved around a redacted contract he had been offered which he said came with “multi-million dollar penalties” if he was unable to create the content necessary, which he deemed an offer akin to a “slave contract.” The podcaster complained of the ad spots required per episode and lamented over the monetary repercussions if he were unable to produce his show for the required amount of days per year.
He introduced an initiative called “Stop Big Con” which he advertised as a means to holding media companies accountable, saying he would march in with the number of people who signed the petition to show companies how many audience members were as upset as him.
Although he said he didn’t want to name specific people or networks, it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to suggest that the redacted contract came from The Daily Wire, a theory confirmed 24-hours later by Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing.
In a nearly hour long response video, posted January 18th, Boreing broke down each line of the contract that had been extended to Crowder and explained the reasoning behind each clause, saying Crowder must have “misunderstood” parts of the offer.
Boreing said the negotiations with Crowder actually began in October 2022 before his intentions to depart from The Blaze were made public and a full three months prior to the release of his video launching a war against “Big Conservative Media.”
A non-binding term sheet was sent to Crowder, with the offer of $50 million dollars over the course of four years with an optional two year extension at the rate of another $25 million dollars.
According to Boreing, Crowder refused to red-line the contract offer or even go into a negotiation conversation, telling Boreing that the offer should be closer to $30 million a year — totaling $120 million over four years.
“Steven’s philosophy seems to be: ‘I deserve to be paid millions and millions and millions of dollars whether my show drives the revenue or not.’ That’s not a business relationship … He’s looking for a benefactor,” Boreing said.
The following day, on Jan. 19, Crowder made a response video including the recording of a private conversation he had with Boreing in which he pressed him on the terms of the contract.
In the recording, Boreing said younger talent should be “wage slaves” for a little bit during the start of their career while they grow their brand and audience, a point Crowder vehemently disagreed with.
The recording set off a fire storm in the conservative media industry that had Candace Owens calling it a “bitch move,” and Ben Shapiro calling it “despicable.”
Crowder quieted down after the response video until a few days ago when he began teasing that his show and fan base Mug Club had found a new home.
https://twitter.com/scrowder/status/1633290721863032834
“Rumble — betting on ourselves and Rumble is a hedge on those bets because they actually support what we do,” Crowder said in a video posted to Twitter.
At this time, the details of the contract between Crowder and Rumble are undisclosed.
Rumble commemorated the deal by posting a picture of Crowder’s bullet ridden million subscriber YouTube plaque, aptly hung over a toilet.
