George Soros.
You heard that right. Hedge-fund magnate and mass funder of all things left-wing allowed Vice to avoid bankruptcy. Certainly it won’t come with any strings attached.
Fortress Investment Funds, along with Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital, will be acquiring the alternative media giant for $225 million. A steep drop in value from it’s 2017 high of $5.7 billion. The news will likely lead to a sharp shift in Vice’s tone going forward. Soros also announced he’d be passing his empire to his son, who describes himself as even “more political” than his father. GoDigital Media offered to buy the company for over 300 million, but that offer was rejected. Soros might be pumping more into Vice long-term, so long as they subscribe to their left-wing agenda.
Tim Pool, a former Vice personality, recently sat down with Patrick Bet-David on the PBD Podcast. Pool, a former Vice personality who parted from the company on not-so-great terms in 2017, described the beginning of Vice’s outlook after a decade of musical chairs of different buyouts and ownerships. “Shane Smith [founder] said on Colbert, ‘we’re not democrats, we’re not republicans, we’re just story tellers.’ But then you start expanding, it becomes more and more corporate.”
In 2014, Disney invested $400 million into Vice. Of course, with such a good amount of cash, comes a good amount of control. Patrick noted: “you have to realize, the media’s spin. Shane at the peak was worth $1.6 billion, when the company was worth 5.7 billion, he owned 27% of shares. And Disney put hundreds of millions into Vice at one point.”
But the mission of Vice and its method of operating had fundamentally changed. They didn’t need all that cash to become successful. When Youtube was in its infancy, they aimed to promote unique content. “Confident, capable, outsiders made the team. Around the time I joined, they took the 70 million from Murdoch, started firing OGs and brought in LinkedIn professionals” Pool said.
Pool also goes on to note that in order to get bought out, Smith pulled out the smoke and mirrors. According to Pool, Smith maintained a plan to sell out Vice by inflating the numbers. Pool continued: “my view of it was, there was an article that came out of Shane Smith as a cartoon with a frying pan in a book in it because he was cooking the books. He’d do this clever thing, this year we put a billion dollars on the books. What does that mean? to average person he added billion in revenue. in reality we did a 30 year deal.” Watch the PBD Podcast episode HERE.
Needless to say, that means the money is trickling over three decades. “It sounds like bait and switch,” Adam suggested. “I think it’s fraud” Pool confirmed. Pat goes on to note that this is a common thing. For buyers that don’t know any better, media companies seeking a buy-out can buy their views and followers. They might have 10 million views with only three comments. But an uneducated, traditional conglomerate buyer might not realize that. Long story short, Vice played a lot of big-monied people. Pat sums it up: “Then the network who buys the show goes into the category of qualified morons.”
Stay tuned for Pat’s podcast for honest, inside-track takes:
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