The obsession with betting on football teams just hit fever pitch in Kenya as we draw closer to the end of the English Premier League season. Terms like odds, multi-bets, sets and jackpots have become common lingo for money-hungry strugglers out to make a quick lazy buck. I tried my luck in football betting last weekend and got my fingers burnt – I will not venture into that again.
Yet I think there’s still a business opportunity that we, guys with no money to spare but think we do, could actually engage in with the potential for ridiculously crazy gains – marriage betting. Yes, I believe it is time we subject this obviously struggling, age-old practice to some pata potea and make both the union’s success and failure beneficial at some level.
I understand fans of Manchester United are no longer keen on betting on football given the English team’s recent run of miserably poor form. Just ask Ndirangu my taxi guy; he placed all his rent money on a bet, assured that his beloved ‘Red Devils’ would walk over that Danish team with a name that few can pronounce. As fate would have it, he lost the bet and has now gone into depression – his wife packed up and left. To people like Ndirangu, I say dump your football team and place a bet on a marital union that, although meant to last till death, is often shaken off its roots by a simple sneeze.
Of course betting in itself is a bit of a foreign concept. And therefore we will be fair and start with marriages from foreign lands. For example, do you think the union between American rapper Kanye West and reality TV star Kim Kardashian will last more than five years? Would you place a wager on that? What about musicians Beyonce and Jay Z? Oh! Rumours about their supposed divorce will never end.
Back home there are enough examples of celebrity marriages that provide fertile ground for placing a bet. Marriages so shaky we have no clue why they came together in the first place. Only last week we were talking about Daudi’s union to that air hostess that is looking all but over less than a year after the lavish wedding. In fact, I dare say, from what I see, Kenyan celebrities are not really cut out for marriage; see Prezzo, Abbas Kubaff, DNG – let’s not even start with the sexy TV newscasters – but that’s beside the point. Right now all we need is enough wobbly marriages to allow for a decent multi-bet. And that we have.
Just like a broken clock tells the correct time at least twice a day, even these sorry excuses of marriages are definitely good for something. That Mama Mboga who won a Sh22 million jackpot betting on football teams that she has never watched should be the inspiration. If Waihiga Mwaura’s marriage to that beautiful gospel artiste should come to naught before the end of this year, God forbid, it should still be beneficial at least financially to some struggling Wafula somewhere who has neither met nor seen Waihiga or his wife in his life.
But it is not all about bad marriages and divorce, if you may have enough faith in a particular marital union solemnised in the last two years; this would be your chance to exercise that faith and panda mbegu. Put your money where your mouth is and together we will increase the value of these unions. Maybe then we will have a better perception of marriage in 2016. Maybe by openly doubting the longevity of some unions, it will spur the couple to work harder and prove the doubters wrong. This is my business plan, for which I now seek investors willing to bet on it and make me rich.