I’ve been researching the following - hiring a string quartet would cost around £800 for a 2hr set, hiring a local ~300 seat venue would cost around £750. If tickets were sold for a flat rate of £20, this would make the total amount in sales ~£6000, and after the above costs were deducted this would leave ~£4450 for a single event. I currently possess a local instagram page with ~10,000 followers that live within my city so this would help with advertising, though I would still allocate money into other methods of marketing to ensure maximum reach to sell tickets.
On paper, arranging such an event doesn’t seem too difficult to do - is there something glaring I’m missing or is this potentially ‘easy’ money?
I wouldnt call this “easy”, anyone can make money doing almost anything if you do the work. This would be promoting an event, renting space, insurance liability, backups if a performer or performance part falls through. Its still risk and work. But you should try it! Im in a big city and these events exist and are marketed as candle light concerts, where they do just what you said and just have like 2,000 candles everywhere. So its profitable if done right!