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Hosting a successful quiz night
The key to holding a successful quiz night is to put the emphasis on fun forget rules and regulations regarding team numbers and avoid holding rounds on specific topics such as sport, history etc. this will encourage players to join your quiz and thus swell your numbers. Limiting team numbers to say four will only discourage people from taking part in your quiz and will only boost the chances of the "local brain boxes" winning every week. Without team size limits your quiz goer's will soon learn that the best chance of winning they have is to increase their team in size thus bringing in more players each week. As a bonus you will then not have to deal with those awkward moments when a team of five arrives and states that say great aunt Maude is not going to take part - when you know that she will.
Avoiding fixed rounds on specific subjects will reduce team boredom -- having to endure 10 or so questions on a topic they know little or nothing about. Jumble your questions. It is also a good idea that you also vary the difficulty of the questions and offer just a few very hard questions to give the cleverer quiz goer's a chance to shine but not in such a way that they dominate the entire quiz week in week out.
As a question master relax and enjoy your quiz the friendly banter between you and the quiz goer's is all part of the fun. Quiz goer's love to interact with their question master and good tempered banter helps add to the enjoyment. Try and include picture rounds, music rounds and table top quizzes in your quiz night.
I have hosted many hundreds of quizzes over the years and have always found that the above guides is the best way to run a quiz. I started a quiz night in many different venues often with just two or three teams and within a few short weeks have achieved attendances of over twenty teams often with team sizes of up to 10 members. Having a 100 or so people enjoying a fun relaxed experience at a quiz night is far better for you, the host, than just pandering to 3 or 4 teams of 4 people who are more worried that the rules are adhered too than actually doing the quiz.
Being in licensed trade or hospitality industry means that you need to have the widest possible appeal to the greatest audience you can, if you do pander to your "locals" wishes all of the time then I afraid your "locals" will soon be the only customers you will have; often called the "click". As a Landlord or Landlady you stand a better chance of making a go of your establishment if you spread yourself between all your customers evenly and that includes any new faces you might see. To my dismay I have visited all to many pubs that have had their customer base limited by the attitude of the "locals" who often fall silent, block the bar and stare at any new faces who happen to wonder in to "their bar". Often my only hope of enjoying my visit is the attitude of the management and more often than not they turn out to be just as un-welcoming.
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The trick to getting your quiz numbers up is, apart from no limit on team size, the way you advertise or promote your quiz night. The best way I have found over the years is to contact all your local groups, Scouts, W.I., play groups, St. Johns Ambulance, Britain in Bloom Committee and the list goes on. Offer the chance to have the proceeds of four weeks of the quiz entry fees and permit them each to run a raffle on the quiz nights they are to benefit from. In return to qualify for a months proceeds they supply at least one team per week in the weeks before their allotted benefit. Worked well and with growing numbers they could very quickly stand to gain £500-600 a month a great prize for any local organisation and believe me word will soon spread.
In the past I have raised money for such things a the church toilet fund, yes the local church wanted to install a public toilet, local football club's end of season weekend away, life saving equipment for ST. Johns.
And once whilst walking out of my lane on route to the pub I was stopped by the Chairman of the Parrish Council who inquired if I liked the flower boarder he and his team where planting up at the time. I was surprised at his questioning and taken back a little as to why he was so interested in my view on the subject. However all was soon revealed when he announced - that after all I was paying for it - from the proceeds of next months quizzes and that he had obtained the materials on account purely on the knowledge that the quiz would generate enough money for him to proceed and make payment.
This system works really well on many fronts, you have free advertising and are seen as a great community player, you have a guaranteed number of teams each week and their numbers are always swelled by the benefiting organisations other members who will attend their months quizzes. You coffers are swelled and people who might never think of entering your establishment will have the opportunity to sound you out and they should live within your area, unlike pub teams which may travel miles to your pub and thus will never return no matter how good a night they had playing say darts - except to play again next year.
The hardest part of any quiz is the questions themselves, you still have to have them whether your attendance is 12 or 120 the same amount of effort is required. As a question master I always preferred a busy night than a quiet night and found that having a few new faces in calmed my nerves quite a bit and to break the ice I quite often give the answer to few questions by saying "and whilst your writing (give the answer) I'll ask the next question" this often broke the ice and got a few laughs from both regulars and new quizzers alike. Another laugh raiser was "if you have borrowed a pen then there are just two simple rules - no licking and no nicking - you may chew them if you wish, at least then the next borrower will know you have been there"
If you don't choose to buy my ready made quiz packs, picture quiz or TV theme quizzes then I won't be offended indeed I still wish you a very successful quiz night and hope that your business prospers for I am passionate about the pub trade and truly believe it is the heart of any local community.