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Basic Maths

So there’s this London radio station, right. And they happen to be running a competition at the moment in which they are asking their listeners to do their marketing for them (well, they already ask their listeners to pick the records, so this isn’t such a great leap–presumably they will soon be outsourcing all remaining jobs at the station to their listeners: I look forward to Alex Zane running a competition with the chance to win the opportunity to come in to the studios late at night and clean the toilets for minimum wage).

Anyway, they’re offering a prize of £10,000 (the “marketing budget”) to whoever does the best bit of promotional activity for the breakfast show, and most of the efforts so far have been, frankly, rubbish. But I’m highly confused about this one. For the benefit of any non Facebook users, the idea appears to be that they will get as many people as possible to join this Facebook group and then they will use the £10,000 to fund a bar tab at a huge party:

“The £10,000 that we win (and I’m sure we will) will be used for a mega awesome super party that is free for everyone that is a member.

All the money goes on boooze, imagine that a £10,000 bar tab, in a quality establishment.

The more people the bigger it can be.”

Um. Apparently no one in the group has even the most basic grasp of mathematics. Surely the more people the smaller it will be? They’ve currently got 3,022 members, so if they all turn up at this party that’s going to be a whopping £3.30 each. That’s not going to go very far at London bar prices, is it.

When one of the organisers of this Facebook group was interviewed on the radio show the other week, he suggested that they would hire a venue like Koko. Presumably the group organisers are planning to pay for that out of their own pockets (given that they’ve committed to spending “all the money on booze”), but I’m confused about that too. You see, Koko’s capacity is only 1,500, so half of the group’s members aren’t even going to get in, even though they promised that the party will be “free for everyone that is a member”. And anyway, those lucky 1,500 members will have the whopping sum of £6.66 each towards their drinks.

Don’t spend that all at once, kids…