Guide for landlords

How to start a quiz night at your pub

A good weekly quiz turns your quietest night into one of your best, and the people it brings in come back on other nights too. It takes about two months to find its feet. Most quizzes that fail do so in the first few weeks, for reasons that are easy to avoid.

Pick the night, then never move it

Choose the night you most need to fill, usually Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, and check what the pubs nearby already run. Competing head-on with an established quiz down the road is hard; running the same night with a different crowd in mind is not.

Then keep it there. Same night, same start time, every week, including the weeks when only three teams turn up. A regular quiz becomes part of people's week; one that moves or gets cancelled for the football never does. 8pm is a sensible start: late enough for people to eat first, early enough to finish before last orders.

Entry fee and prizes

A small entry fee per person keeps the prize meaningful and the tables committed. The common approach is a pound or two a head, with the pot going to the winners, often as a bar tab, which keeps the money in the building. Add a spot prize or a booby prize for last place so more than one table goes home with something.

A rollover jackpot question can build excitement over weeks. If you add anything that works like a raffle or a lottery, check with your licensing authority first.

Get the format right

Around ninety minutes, six rounds of ten, with a break in the middle for the bar and the toilets. Mix the round types as well as the topics: a music round and a picture round among the general knowledge keep the room awake. Open with something easy so new teams score early and come back next week.

Cap team sizes at six and keep the questions fair: nothing that one regular is certain to know, and nothing with a disputed answer. The guide to hosting a pub quiz goes into running the night itself.

Who hosts it

The host matters more than the questions. You want someone who is comfortable on a microphone, keeps things moving, and is fair when a table argues an answer. That might be you, a member of staff, or a local quizmaster. What you want to avoid is a host who spends the evening marking in a corner while the room gets bored: automatic scoring on a screen solves that.

Filling the first few weeks

Tell your regulars first, in person: they are your first teams and your best advertisement. Then a chalkboard outside, a poster by the bar and the toilets, posts on your pub's Facebook page and in local community groups, and a message to local clubs, workplaces and sports teams. A quiz is an easy night out for a group, so target groups.

Take bookings. A team that has booked turns up, and a full-looking room on week two is what makes week three bigger. Collect an email address or a phone number from each team so you can remind them the day before and tell them when there is a theme night.

Food, themes and keeping it growing

A simple food offer for quiz night, such as a sharing platter per team or a pie and a pint deal, lifts spend per head more than anything else. Once it is established, a themed night every month or so (Halloween, Christmas, a decade, a sport) gives regulars a reason to bring friends.

How to know if it's working

Compare the night's takings with the same night before the quiz started, and keep a note of teams each week. Give it eight weeks before judging it. If the numbers are climbing slowly, it is working; quiz nights build by word of mouth, one team telling another.

Free questions to start with

You don't need to write a quiz from scratch. There is a ready-made 100-question quiz night and a set of free themed rounds with answers, each downloadable as a PDF or Word file.