Abeg, Flutterwave return as sponsors for BBNaija Season 7

For a second time running, Fintech company, Abeg has been unveiled as the headline sponsor of the famous reality show, Big Brother Naija (BBNaija). This was disclosed by the show organisers, Multichoice (owners of DStv and GOtv) in a call for auditions for housemates.

Abeg is a peer-to-peer social payment platform that allows users to send, request and receive money quickly. It also allows users to seamlessly pay for goods and services, and transfer money to friends and family free of charge.

The company has also unveiled fintech company, Flutterwave as the associate sponsor.

This is Abeg’s second tenure as the main sponsor of the TV show following its previous appearance in the 6th season of the TV show which was held in 2021. The news of its sponsorship was surprising to many because Abeg was only recently launched in September 2020.

Cryptocurrency trading company, Patricia was that season’s associate sponsor. The company is relinquishing the position to Flutterwave, who is also a previous sponsor.

What is in for these brands

The popular appeal of BBN is not quite surprising. The drama, lush accommodation, culture, emotions and large cash prizes -which are key components of the programme’s visuals- have created an alternative reality and provide some vicarious pleasures for many young Nigerians.

Hence, Headlining the show has proven to be a massive marketing strategy for certain companies.

According to Multichoice, the 2019 show alone polled over 240 million votes. The highest amount of votes ever since the show launched in 2006 was in the 2021 edition with over 1.3 billion votes. This is a 44% increase from the 900 million votes in 2020.

The BBN season 2 which was held in 2017 and the following season (3) which was held in 2018 has PayPorte Global Systems (PayPorte) as the major sponsor. PayPorte is a Nigerian Omni-channel retail company.

In 2019, Betway Nigeria (Bet9ja), an online entertainment and gaming brand replaced Payporte as the headline sponsor after 2 years. Betway was said to have won the place after “a tough competitive bidding process involving other firms”. Speculations have it though that the betting brand paid well over $1m for the deal.

Abeg app

Abeg rose to prominence on BBNaija in the previous season, Season 6. Many Nigerians were taken aback because it was a relatively new app barely a year old but were intrigued by the name, which is a slang term. Speculations arose after reports surfaced that it had paid over 700 million Naira to sponsor Season 6 of BBNaija, this brought about concerns.

Even though everyone was wondering how the app would survive, it was discovered that the app is owned by Piggy Vest and that BBNaija truly did provide the app with a lot of visibility, which is exactly what every brand and company needs. As a result, it wasn’t really a bad decision after all.

Abeg saw a surge in app downloads, going from 20,000 at the start of the Big Brother Naija Season 6 show to 1.8 million at the finale, which is a significant achievement for such a young app.

Flutterwave

Despite the fact that the fintech company was never a significant sponsor of BBNaija, it teamed with the most viewed reality program in Nigeria in the fifth season to organize many tasks and cash-winning events. This is the institutional advertising plan of every brand. The FlutterwaveXBBNaija challenge and the Flutterwave Store Lockdown Shopping challenge were their most popular contest games on the show.

According to these challenges, the fintech company was performing a public advertisement of their services, which was desperately needed at the time, especially owing to the COVID 19 pandemic’s effects.

The company said it had handled 107 million transactions worth $5.4 billion when it raised its Series B a few months before its partnership with the TV show. Flutterwave stated a few months later that the number had risen to over 140 million transactions worth over $9 billion, with over 290,000 businesses using its platform to make payments.

After the event, Flutterwave closed a $170 million in series C funding, valuing the company at over $1 billion.