Top Tips For Running A Pub Quiz
Why Run A Quiz?
Still one of the most popular and cost effective ways to generate trade on a quiet night, the pub quiz is a great way to entertain your customers.
Running a successful pub quiz is not an exact science. The format you choose will depend on the type of pub you run and the customers who visit. Take the time to plan and organise a fun and enjoyable quiz and your customers will keep coming back and bring others with them.
Whether you decide to run you quiz weekly, fortnightly or monthly, be consistent with the day you hold it on (for example every Monday night or the first Sunday of each month). If people turn up at your pub expecting a quiz and you’ve moved it to a different night that week they will probably go away disappointed.
Advertising Your Quiz
Advertising is important and doesn’t have to cost lots of money. Provided you quiz if fun and enjoyable, word of mouth will be your most effective method of advertising. If people have a great night they will talk about it to their friends.
Put posters up around the bar to promote your quiz and maybe one or two in the window facing out. A free poster can be downloaded here.
Depending on your location, an A-board outside your pub can also be a good form of advertising, particularly if you are in a busy location with lots of people or traffic passing you pub.
Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are becoming an increasingly popular way for pubs to keep their customers up to date with what’s on but make sure you keep the pages current and up to date as an outdated page with old postings can make it appear that you have stopped trading.
Also consider using the free listings in local What’s On guides both printed and online.
Finally, you might want to consider a local leaflet drop to houses in the area around your pub or even local newspaper advertising if the size of your venue warrants it.
Things to Consider When Running a Pub Quiz
You will need someone to present and run your quiz. They will need to be outgoing, comfortable with speaking in public and capable of injecting a bit of fun and humour into the quiz.
Their job will be to co-ordinate the event by taking entry fees, making announcements, handing out answer sheets, reading out questions, marking the results, awarding prizes, making sure people play by the rules and keeping people interested and entertained. After all, the whole point of the quiz is for your customers to enjoy themselves.
You may want to run the quiz yourself or know someone suitable that can run it for you. If not, consider hiring a professional quiz presenter but keep in mind that this will increase the cost.
Consider whether you want to place a limit on the size of teams. The pool of knowledge from a team of twelve people will provide a significant advantage over a team of two. A limit of six or eight people is a popular choice.
All but the smallest pubs will probably require a P.A. system so the quiz presenter can be heard when reading out questions. Not everyone will take part in the quiz so the quizmaster will need to compete against general pub noise and conversation.
For larger venues, a radio microphone will allow the presenter to walk around while asking questions. This can be useful for liaising with teams during rounds and discourages people from cheating by looking up answers on their mobile phones.
For most people a quiz is about fun. If you offer a large prize (especially cash) things will get more serious. There will be a bigger incentive for players to raise disputes, some players may be tempted to cheat and you may attract the attention of serious quiz ‘enthusiasts’ whose sole aim will be to turn up and intellectually annihilate your regulars so they can walk off with the prize.
Unless you want to attract hardcore quizzers and have a serious big prize quiz, it is recommended that you keep the prize modest. A bottle of wine, gallon of beer, meal in the pub or vouchers (again, redeemable only in the pub) are fine and will have a higher face value than their cost to you.
If you wish, you can offer a prize for first, second and/or third place so more teams go away with something. You can also award small spot prizes during the quiz to mix things up a bit. For example, a free drink for the first person to call out the answer to a question.
If everyone has a chance of winning something then your quiz will be more popular. See the Jackpot section further down.
Quiz Entry Charges?
You may decide to not charge a fee at all in which case more people might turn up to enter and you could take more in sales over the bar. However, if you don’t charge anything you will have to fund the prizes yourself so the cost of the quiz will go up.
Alternatively, you could charge a nominal entry fee for each player (say £1 or £2) to fund the prizes, good causes or the jackpot (if applicable).
If you are offering bigger prizes (perhaps for a special event such as Christmas) then you may want to charge a higher entry fee to cover it.
Pub Quiz Format
Simplicity is key. If people don’t understand what to do they won’t play. Other factors such as the length of your quiz, difficulty level, etc. will depend on your customers. Get feedback from your customers and change things around if you need to.
Try to keep the rounds varied by having different themes or concepts. For example a picture round, anagrams round, puzzle round, etc. Make sure you have plenty of breaks to allow people time to buy drinks, have a cigarette or visit the loo.
The questions should ideally appeal to a broad spectrum covering a range of age groups and subjects that will appeal to most (young, old, men, women, sports fans, TV buffs). The difficulty of the questions should be varied with some easy ones for everybody and harder ones to determine the cleverer players.
However, if the same team keep winning every week your customers may get bored. To counter this you could introduce a handicap system where the previous winners are given a 10 point handicap.
Some quiz organisers recommend starting a quiz with a picture round or similar where teams can read and answer questions on the sheet. It can help people get settled and ready for the questions to be read in later rounds.
By making round one a ‘hand out’ round and giving teams 15 or 20 minutes to answer the questions, you also be able to accommodate any late entrants that maywish to take part.
On The Night
On the night you will need to setup and test the pa system, collect names and entry fees from each team, hand out answer sheets, write team names on the score sheet, announce the rules and format of the quiz and let people know when the quiz will be starting (20, 10, 5 minutes, etc.).
Read out the names of each team at the start of the quiz to make sure everyone is still present. Ensure that everyone can hear and adjust the volume (up or down) as required.
When reading questions the presenter should call each question twice.
Between rounds, answer sheets can be marked in one of three ways…
- Ask teams to mark their own answers – you would need very trustworthy players and a friendly atmosphere to allow this.
- Ask teams to swap answer sheets with a team next to them and mark each others. Again, an element of trust and good sportsmanship will be required. Marking can be ‘inconsistent’ if team rivalry is fierce.
- The quiz presenter marks the answers by collecting them in after each round. This is the fairest way and is less likely to lead to disputes. However, it takes more time so the quizmaster may need help if you have a lot of teams.
Once the questions are marked, announce the results before starting the next round. This adds a bit of excitement to the event, particularly if the scores are close. If teams have swapped sheets for marking, ask teams to raise their hand on their score as you count down.
In the event of a tie break you will need a ‘first to answer’ or ‘nearest the correct answer’ type question.
Running a Jackpot
A jackpot is a great way to generate extra interest in your quiz. It is basically a game of chance where teams/players are given an opportunity to win an accumulated cash prize. If they don’t succeed the prize rolls over to the following quiz and increases each time until someone wins it.
You could reserve the chance to win the jackpot to the winning team as part of the prize. However, by keeping the jackpot separate and giving all teams a chance to win it you ensure that even those who don’t normally win the quiz will still have a chance to win something.
Once the fund builds up, your quiz will enjoys a boost in popularity as people enter just for a chance to win the jackpot.
Higher Lower in particular is a great way to add a bit of theatre to your quiz night. Give all teams the chance to call or higher or lower and if they reach the end of the board they win the jackpot. Start with the winning team and work down through the ranks to the team that came last.
If no-one wins the jackpot rolls over to the following quiz. This gives the best of both worlds by providing an incentive to win the quiz but allowing all teams to take part. Plus, teams are more likely to stay to the end of the night.
Another popular game that is ideal to run at the end of the quiz is Big Deal. Hold a draw at the end to see which team comes up to play. If they win they get the jackpot.
Spin The Wheel and Open the Box are also suitable to run as additional games at the end of your quiz. They are easy to setup and play and simple to understand.
How Can I Stop Mobile Phone Cheats In My Quiz?
While you can never guarantee that cheating won’t occur at your quiz but there are a number of ways to discourage people from using mobile phones to look up answers.
First, make sure everyone is aware that it’s against the rules to use a mobile phone to search for answers. Players won’t want to switch their phones off altogether as people may need to get hold of them, but you can politely ask that they restrict use to emergencies only during question rounds.
State that any team caught cheating will be either disqualified or given a points penalty (i.e. 20 points).
Openly encourage other teams to shop anyone they suspect of cheating and ask bar staff to keep an eye on teams, perhaps by collecting glasses during rounds. If the presenter has a radio mic they can walk around while asking the questions which will put people off mobile phone use. In addition, the radio mic will often pick up the mobile signal and make a noise.
If you catch someone cheating you can shame them in a light-hearted and humorous way. Don’t become confrontational. As long as you make it clear from the start that a penalty will be incurred for looking up answers on a phone, the cheats can’t complain if they get caught.
Another way to make it harder for cheats is to make the rounds shorter and quicker, collecting answer sheets straight away for marking. This gives phone cheats less time to look up the answers but make sure that players have enough time to answer the questions legitimately.
If the prize for your quiz is modest then people are unlikely to risk the embarrassment of getting caught cheating to win it. Larger prizes might act as an incentive to take a chance.
Theme Quizzes
Keep you quiz varied by adding a theme to it. For example, key events such as Halloween, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc all make for great quiz themes. We have a number of free themed quizzes on this site for you to download.
Thanks for reading this guide. There are many other resources to be found on the internet regarding running a quiz so take the time to do a bit of research, gather ideas and put together a quiz that will keep customers coming through the door each week. Happy quizzing!
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