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I don't think you understand the number of monthly listeners he draws, it was around 200 million or so. If you compare it to Howard Stern's contract of 100 million a year, it's really not a huge stretch for Joe Rogan to negotiate that price for a multi year deal and exclusive rights to the back catalog. You can't suddenly snap your fingers and generate a huge audience, extensive content and marque brand into existence.

> They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit.

He's a cultural fit for x hundreds of millions. You may not fall into that demographic, but there's no discounting that other cultures exist outside of your own.

They tricked a bunch of users over to their (awful) podcast playing experience, playing (free) podcasts is cheaper than paying for music for your subscribers. I don't think they've made their money back on it yet but any user that plays a podcast is just free (or unspent) money for them.