• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BBNaija: The biggest economic stimulus package you have probably never heard of

BBNaija: The biggest economic stimulus package you have probably never heard of

Sometime in August, I picked up an unlikely habit that had a wonderful coincidence at the centre of it. Scrolling through my Instagram feed one day, I came across a post from a former university friend canvassing for votes for a Big Brother Naija Season 6 housemate called Cross.

Full disclosure: I had a general idea of who the housemates were because when you share a space with a fanatic female BBN viewer who tends to monopolise the TV a lot, well, what choice do you really have? This time however, I looked a little bit more closely at the picture of this housemate and a surge of excitement shot through me – I knew this guy!

Cross Ike, also known to me from our days playing football together at the University of Hull, thus became my favourite to win for no other reason than my petty nepotism. Which is to say, I started to care about who would win BBN Season 6. That is also a roundabout way of admitting that I became a BBN viewer – and an avid one too.

Watching the show as a semi-hostage for the first time over the next few weeks, I started to understand it as more than just a platform for people to launch themselves into celebrity-focused careers. This show was also an immense marketing platform with effectively a captive audience. There were branded clothes, sponsored food items, branded furniture, even branded activities like a scarcely believable song contest for a drink brand. (Here, Cross channelled his inner 21 year-old from Cottingham Road in 2010, to my great nostalgia.)

The download numbers of the newly launched ‘Abeg’ app, boosted by its sponsorship of the show, were nothing short of spectacular. Now because I have the mind of an unrepentant troublemaker, I couldn’t help wondering: What numbers did this show pull in terms of revenue coming in from sponsors? How much did it take to put these products before a captive 9-figure Sub Saharan market? When I put the question into my professional network, I did not quite find what I was looking for, but I did find something surprising.

Read also: Whitemoney wins BBNaija Shine Ya Eye edition

The N2.5bn house of characters

Before I go further, I have to point out that these are genuine MultiChoice numbers, but the source cannot be named so all you have to go on is my pinky swear. I pinky swear that the following statement is true: “The total cost of designs, construction, furnishing and fitting out of the surveillance hydra that is the Big Brother Naija house comes to N2.5bn.” Yes, N2.5 billion. That’s 5 Linda Ikeji mansions. Or 5 million Ejikems. However you calculate it – that much. For that purportedly ordinary house with the outside patio that turned a grown Saga into a meme.

Remember I’m still pinky swearing here – a further N61,518,000 is spent annually on maintaining this house. Annually, as in “Season 6 cost N61.5m and Season 7 will cost another N61.5m.” Stretching the limits of my belaboured little finger, I was also informed that MultiChoice sources for as many local inputs as it can manage. This means that local furniture makers, artisans and suppliers literally got a piece of the BBN pie that would ultimately be crowned by a certain blonde haired kitchen dweller.

According to this person who was suspiciously happy to reveal supposedly “confidential“ figures to a journalist who happens to write a tri-weekly column, BBN Season 6 production spend exceeded N1bn including staff salaries, payment of production contractors and extras, maintenance costs and equipment. My Economics is quite rusty, so I cannot give a figure for what the economic multiplier of N1bn spent in a single location would be to adjacent industries like hospitality. I will be brave and predict that it would likely be significantly more than N1bn. As an aside, I have a couple of ex-colleagues from The Other News who now work in and around BBNaija at MultiChoice, and I have an idea of how much they get paid. Let’s just call it “somewhere above the going rate for a Creative in Lagos.” You know, and then some.

But the government…

Let me wear my suit-and-tie-Twitter-avi persona for a moment and ask this question: “What useful purpose does BB Naija serve for Nigeria?” The replies should soon start rolling in: “It distracts our youths from Nigeria’s problems,” will say this guy. “If only people can vote in elections the same way they vote during BBN,” will say that guy. “How can people just sit down and watch other people living their lives 24/7?” says the third guy shaking his head. Now let me take off these stuffy clothes and tell you something that this birdie told me about BB Naija’s contribution – BBN is a huge source of government revenue.

“Huge source of government revenue” as in, at least N100M to be exact. According to the figures I obtained from this bit of information gathering, which was the journalistic equivalent of shooting clay pigeons in a garden, the total sum spent on licensing, audit and voting in the course of BBN Season 6 was N205,060,000. This includes statutory government levies and charges, taxes and professional fees paid to Deloitte for organising and auditing the voting process.

If you believe my pinky finger which is still in a supine position, over N200m also went on Marketing, which includes payments to the vendors and agencies that made Season 6 memorable for the viewing public. A further N200m+ went on travel and accommodation, which includes expenses such as hotels, flight tickets and food – even car hires and Ubers were included in this.

At the end of all this, Cross did not win, much to my surprisingly acute disappointment. The blonde dude Hazel Onou, AKA Whitemoney walked away with the N90M grand prize on Sunday after successfully deploying the stomach-to-heart strategy on millions of Nigerian viewers. Looking at these figures, I finally understood the one thing that had always escaped me regarding why BBNaija is such a heavily anticipated event in the Nigerian creative media space every year. It is not just a television show – it is a widely anticipated economic stimulus event.

All of which is a very roundabout way of admitting that I now like the BBNaija franchise after years of turning up my metaphorical nose at it. “I like it for the Economics” is the weakest excuse that an adult human being could ever come up with to justify suddenly getting hooked on Big Brother.

That however, is my story and I’m sticking to it.