Why Does Muthoni Still Sing? Blankets & Wine Seems Like a Terrific Business!

So Team Ghafla! went for our first Blankets and Wine yesterday, and my oh my, we found that it is a bigger deal than we ever expected! Check out the picture above to get an idea of what I’m talking about. This is truly one of the premier events in Kenya. What I wondered though, after seeing this incredible spectacle, is why is Muthoni still doing music, when she has this golden goose on her hands?

Let’s do the basic mathematics together. “Blankets” costs every reveller 1,500 to get in(except, of course, us press folk :). Judging by the crowd, I’d estimate somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 people attend this gig. For calculation purposes, let’s put the number in the middle, say 3,000 people. So in gate fees ALONE, Muthoni and company mint a grand total of 4.5 MILLION in revenues.

Add to that the sponsorship money that they get from elite advertisers such as Capital FM, who want to reach the wealthy demographic who attends blankets. I’ll put that at a modest number of about 500,000 (50k per advertiser), and you end up with a grand total of 5 MILLION SHILLINGS earned in one bloody day! But that’s not the best part even!

The best part of all this, is that Muthoni and company have set this thing up such that, despite people paying a whole 1,500, they still have to bring their own refreshments to the venue! So all Muthoni has to do is provide the venue and the music, and the rest of the hassle is up to the fans to sort themselves out! This ensures tremendous margins for the “Blankets” business.

After all is said and done, I don’t think it would be a stretch of the imagination to estimate Muthoni’s take home earnings from this event to be in the region of several hundred thousand a month, an amount that’s very hard to come by via concert performances, so tell us Muthoni, queen of drummer queens, why do you still do music again?

UPDATE: Muthoni answered this pertinent question here.