Idk, why offer to pay for Nick's audience?
I guess they offered him a number they think they can recoup via rumble rants (which, would line up with $100-200k, assuming Rackets could pull in numbers similar to his YouTube superberries). And they're a pretty devoted core group, so maybe they saw the eyeballs as worth it? Getting 10k of regular viewers at functionally no cost to them.
Actually yeah you're right, assuming my guesses are within an order of magnitude, it really would make sense for Rumble.