SPAC silliness hit a new high yesterday, in the form of a giant stock surge for the blank check company taking Rumble public.
Driving the news: Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski tweeted an offer to top podcaster Joe Rogan, offering him $100 million over four years to move his show to Rumble from Spotify.
- For those unfamiliar, Rumble is a Toronto-based YouTube challenger, backed by Peter Thiel and best known for hosting MAGA content.
- Shares of CF Acquisition Corp. VI, which in December agreed to buy Rumble at an implied $2.1 billion valuation, climbed as much as 39% on the news.
Be smart: Rumble isn't poaching Joe Rogan. If Spotify wanted to let Rogan walk, or censor him due to recent controversies, it would have done so already. Rogan and Spotify are in the midst of a multi-year, exclusive contract, and Rogan sure knows Spotify's future dollars are more certain than Rumble's.
- Axios asked Rumble's spokesperson if the company was also offering to pay Spotify to get Rogan out of his deal, or perhaps pay Rogan's legal bills were he to renege. No reply.
- In other words, this was a transparent PR ploy. And traders ate it up like applesauce.
The bottom line: There's perhaps an argument that investors just responded positively to Pavlovski's hubris, believing it portends well for Rumble's future. But the stronger case is that investors in this sort of SPAC are very easy to manipulate.
