Every week in pubs across the UK, customers sit down to observe a time-honoured ritual in which brows furrow, fingernails are chewed, adrenaline flows, tempers fray, defeat is bitter and victory tastes sweet: the pub quiz. For several decades this event has been a fixture of British life, and it remains as popular as ever.
So if you run a pub and have yet to venture into the world of the pub quiz, you might be pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it can be to run one - and by the upturn in your takings on quiz nights. Many pub landlords say that a pub quiz is much more profitable than, say, showing football on big screens: customers will come in to watch a big football match (which costs the pub a lot of money to show) and nurse a pint for two hours. Pub quizzers, on the other hand, like to drink.
The British have always loved quizzes: quiz shows have been a staple of radio and television since the birth of the media - the BBC’s Round Britain Quiz has been running since 1947. Our love affair with the pub quiz goes back to the 1970s, when a British company, Burns & Porter, seized on our appetite for quizzes and developed a nationwide business selling pub quiz questions and formats. Then in the early 1980s the board game Trivial Pursuit took off, further cementing our passion for general knowledge and obscure factoids. “Trivia” became an issue of vital importance. And the pub quiz has made its way on to television in the form of Al Murray’ Great British Pub Quiz, a series with celebrity guests show on the Quest channel.
How to run a pub quiz
If you’re new to the game, here are some tips and suggestions. The first is the most obvious: make it regular. If your customers know that, say, Thursday night is quiz night, they will be able to plan their visit and get their teams together and book a table. Once you’ve settled on a regular night, publicise it with posters, chalk boards and social media - your pub’s Facebook page can announce the event in advance, reveal who this week’s quiz will be hosted by, give the starting and finishing times, and so on.
If you don’t have the resources to host a pub quiz, there are plenty of specialist companies such as Question One that can be hired in to do it for you. They will supply questions, printed sheets for picture rounds, quiz hosts and even amplification equipment if required.
If you are happy to host your own quiz but require fresh questions every week, companies such as Redtooth will provide these at a modest cost. The costs can be partly covered by an entrance fee for each team (normally this is around £1-£2 per person), but your higher takings should more than make up for any extra expenditure.
If you decide to host your own quiz, it’s important to ask the questions slowly and clearly, and to repeat them. Be prepared to repeat them again if someone hasn’t heard them properly. Try to make it funny and relaxed. Music rounds and picture rounds help to keep things fresh and lively. Avoid using multiple-choice questions: people like to show off that they know the answer. If the answer is a number - say, “How many bones are there in the human body*” - you could accept answers within certain parameters.
Quiz leagues, too, operate in most parts of the country and can add interest and an extra competitive edge to your quiz nights.
Flexible pub furniture
It’s likely that you will need to re-arrange your pub furniture for a pub quiz. If you allow a maximum team size of, say, six people, this will mean grouping tables and chairs together or shifting them accommodate this. A flexible arrangement of chairs and tables that can be moved around and shunted together will make this easier.
How to prevent cheating at your pub quiz
The mobile phone has become the scourge of the quiz night, with a wealth of information available within seconds. The best policy is to politely but firmly announce before the quiz begins that all use of mobile phones is off-limits and that anyone seen using one will be assumed to be cheating and be disqualified from that round. This can be done in a friendly and humorous way, but the message should be clear: no phones. The answer papers for each round can be collected after the round has finished, to avoid contestants using breaks in the quiz to amend or add answers after a “trip to the loo”. If a team is spotted cheating, a quiet word rather than public humiliation is often more effective at ensuring that they comply.
Another solution is to use questions that rely on lateral thinking and cleverness rather than general knowledge: questions that ask, “What’s the connection between…”, or “What’s the odd one out?”, for instance. Some quiz hosts have even devised entire quizzes which they claim are “Google-proof”, though this is perhaps a bit of a stretch: quizzers are usually keen to show off their knowledge of geography, sport or music and might feel put off by this approach.
Other cheat-prevention methods include speed-quizzing - questions are asked quickly to prevent Googling, and answers are entered instantly on a digital device.
The charity quiz
As the festive season approaches, and people’s thoughts turn towards charity and giving, you could hold a pub quiz in aid of a chosen charity. Many charities such as Shelter and the British Heart Foundation have online resources, including downloadable questions and publicity posters, to help your quiz. You could include questions which are “themed” around your chosen charity. Customers are prepared to pay higher quiz fees if it’s for charity, and of course collecting buckets can be passed around.
Winners and losers
Finally, quizzers love nothing more than to know better than the quiz host, so you should also be prepared to fend off challenges to your answers. It might be advisable at the outset to stipulate that “the quiz host is always right”.
A few years ago a libel case arose from a pub quiz: in a Bedfordshire quiz, there was an argument about the answer to one question (it was about the hosts of the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). The quiz master was shown to be mistaken and acknowledged his error but he was nevertheless accused publicly by one of the competitors of being a “cheat”. The row escalated and the quiz master ended up with £5,000 award for libel damages.
It’s unlikely, though, that any argument is likely to escalate this far: quizzers are a competitive bunch, but they are likely to accept defeat with good grace.
Which brings us to prizes. Usually, these are not life-changing sums of money: a few pounds for first, second and third places, or you could award vouchers for food or drinks, redeemable at the bar. For quizzers, though, the actual prize will be less important than the taste of victory.
* A typical human body has 206 bones.
Enjoyed this article? Why not take a look at our other guides for pub landlords? Learn how to make your pub the perfect wedding venue, or the benefits of introducing afternoon tea for your pub. Whatever your plans, make sure you're kitted out with our quality pub furniture - it's what the punters deserve!