Two Main Sponsors for This Year Big Brother Naija Show: Abeg App and Patricia
Yesterday, my friends at Africa’s biggest reality show, Big Brother Nigeria announced their two main sponsors for this year Big Brother Naija show: Abeg App and Patricia, both Nigerian Fintech companies run by young people in their 20’s and 30’s.
Patricia is a returning sponsor of the show. Founded in 2017, the crypto company claims to have over 300,000 customers. In February, it was one of the many crypto companies affected by the ban on cryptocurrency trading in Nigeria. In response to the ban, many crypto exchanges announced plans to expand into other African countries in a bid to reduce the risk of running a business that’s solely reliant on the Nigerian market. While Patricia’s expansion plans are known, it could benefit from exposure to a wider African market via this show.
And Abeg App
The more surprising sponsor is the recently launched Abeg App, which was named the headline sponsor for the show.
Inspired by the US-based mobile payment service, Cash App, Abeg is a fintech platform that allows users to request and send money using unique usernames. It was launched just seven months ago. It’s rumoured that Abeg is a product of leading fintech company, PiggyVest.
Now, this is why I found this very interesting.
According to a source within Multichoice, It costs $3million to be a headline sponsor and $2 million as an associate sponsor for the Big Brother Naija show.
What this means is that Abeg app and Patricia( a cryptocurrency company based in Lagos) paid both 1.5 billion nairas and 1 billion each to earn this title as Big Brother Naija official sponsor.
That is incredible!
This shows all of us that Tech is the future in Nigeria, the new crude oil and the new billionaires in the next 10 years from now would not necessarily need to own massive factories like Dangote cement to be a billionaire.
A simple idea or solving a need in the Nigerian society using tech can mint a new billionaire in dollars, just like that.
I was told by my source within Multi-choice that big brands and businesses run by the older generation of Nigerian entrepreneurs ran away from committing 1 billion nairas to be Big Brother Naija official sponsors. After all, they considered the cost too outrageous but these young men did not think it twice about signing the cheque for Big brother because they believe the money no matter how outrageous is worth the Return on their investment.
This news from Big Brother Naija exemplifies the best of my generation and a reminder that my generation Millennials have come of age in the business space, since this is the case, these guys that represent the best of us made a profound announcement to announce our passage of rites and I’m so proud.
