Rob Ellin: Excellent. So as you know, as part of this — as we’ve always articulated, part of this was all the payables that needed to be cleaned up, right, from the original Slacker acquisition, which is really how we acquired the company, right? Now that, that’s cleaned up, we’re not only in a position with the record labels and publishers where previously we owed them a lot of money, now we have advances with a lot of the record labels. So I think this is a unique time via acquisition right, or internal growth for us to expand overseas. And when you think about these numbers, most subscription models are going to have 50% of their revenues in U.S. and 50% globally. I think this is our year to really attack the global market and I see huge expansion opportunities.
And very similar to when I did Digital Turbine, I always talked about as interest rates change, you’re going to see carriers as well as distributors, right, change their models dramatically and really focusing on owning their own content and having a direct relationship with their consumers. And I think this is — that’s the inflection point that you’re starting to see in a massive way you’re seeing announcements all over the place, a real focus on having a direct dialogue between distributors, carriers, cable companies, satellite, social media companies and their consumers with their own content. So it’s an exciting time for us to expand overseas.
Kevin Dede: You mentioned just in passing the opportunity for live events again. Can you kind of go through what you’re seeing there and what you’re thinking about? And then — and apologies for the ignorance in this question, but where it’s going to fit in and to which group would that go under Audio and the spin with PodcastOne?
Rob Ellin: Yes, it’s a great question. So to start with, just to be clear, we are not going back into the live business where we’re producing our own shows and doing our own shows on our dime, right? So that — we got our learning lesson. We went through — obviously, when we bought React in Chicago, right, even though there were substantial revenues, it cost us a ton of money. And we got a lot of bad luck. Obviously, COVID, the variants of COVID and being shut down for three years. But I think as a team, we recognize we just — we couldn’t play in that field when three years has shut down at COVID. So we moved away from those live events. But from the digital side of it, what’s happening is the consumer is awakened during COVID, just like sports 40 years ago, that the consumer is demanding that you see Coachella and Rock in Rio.
When you hear these numbers, they’re like Super Bowl numbers, 100 million people watched Coachella this year. Our dynamics on that are moving more and more towards pay-per-view or sponsored events that are already paid for. So you’ve seen us do a giant event with eBay where they’re paying for all it upfront. You see us the T-Pain’s festival, where he paid for it upfront. So each of these events that you’re seeing now are paid for versus us buying those rights, and you’re not going to see us go back into the market with our own live events. We’re going to be partnering with the Live Nation and AEGs and [indiscernible] parts of the world, and I think the opportunity is just going to be massive. And I think you’re going to see this year the first ever pay-per-view event.
