Trivia Mafia sends a professional host with a packet of questions and a microphone. If they do not have a route through your town, or you would rather the night belonged to your bar, Quizado gives your own staff the same job in software.
Trivia Mafia brings you a host and a written quiz; Quizado is the software you use when you want to run that night yourself, on your own TVs, on a night and in a town of your choosing.
Their locations page lists the towns they cover, and a host has to be able to drive to you on the same night every week. Plenty of good bars sit outside that map.
Quizado does not need a route. If your bar has internet, you can run the night tonight, whether you are in a metro area or two hours from one.
A touring host has a diary. If their Tuesday is booked at the bar two blocks over, you are offered whatever weeknight is left.
You pick the night, you move it when a game is on, and you can run two in one week if the calendar suits you.
Pen and paper is a warm format, but somebody collects the sheets, reads the handwriting and adds up the columns while the room waits.
Quizado scores as answers come in. The leaderboard is on the TV before the last team has put the phone down.
A hosted night is a fixed cost from week one. Four quiet weeks in January cost the same as four busy ones in October.
The Quizado free plan hosts a real bar trivia night for up to sixteen players, so the first month of testing costs nothing.
The questions, the format and the following belong to the company. If the arrangement ends, the night ends with it.
Your question library, your team list and your season table stay in your account. From Trivia Pro up, your logo is on every screen.
Regulars who have played the same written quiz for two years will tell you when it has gone stale. Themed nights help, but they are extra bookings.
Swap a round for a knockout round or a Name That Tune round without booking anything. Family Feud, Jeopardy and Music Bingo are on Hospitality Group.
Built from the ground up for modern bar trivia and live events.
The host console holds the running order, the timer and the scores. Whoever is holding it reads the question and taps next. No packet to keep track of, no marking pile.
Teams point a camera at the code on the TV and they are playing. Nothing to download, no account, no clipboard at the door.
Buzzer Race, Everyone Answers, Everyone Scores, Knockout and Wager, with Music Bingo making six on Hospitality Group. Build a two-hour night out of them and change the shape next week.
Type a topic and AI generation writes a bar trivia round. Your brewery, your street, the local team. Edit every question before it goes on screen. Monthly AI credits start on Trivia Pro.
Run a table across a season so a team that came third in week two has a reason to be back in week nine. Leagues and seasons are on Trivia Pro and up.
Family Feud and Jeopardy are host-run: you read the question, the room answers out loud, you award the points. Family Feud, Jeopardy and Music Bingo are on Hospitality Group.
Trivia Mafia describes itself on triviamafia.com as a bar and brewery trivia operation based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, producing events throughout the Midwest, plus private events and virtual games (triviamafia.com, checked August 2026). For a private booking one of their hosts arrives with the questions and a microphone. That is a good summary of the whole product: a person, a written quiz, and a microphone, showing up at the same time every week.
The format is deliberately traditional. Their material is pen and paper, the questions are original and written by people, and the subject range is wide enough that a table of twenty-somethings and a table of retirees can both score. That is not an accident. A written quiz with a strong host is the most forgiving format there is: it needs no signal, no screens and no setup beyond a mic that works, and it recovers gracefully when the room is louder than expected.
If that night is running in your bar and it is working, the sensible advice is to leave it alone. This page is for the two situations where it cannot run: the company does not cover your town, or you have decided the night should be yours. In both cases the question is the same. What does it actually take to put on that night yourself?
The Trivia Mafia locations page lists their venues and lets you filter by day and location to find a game near you. That is a lot of ground. It is also, by definition, a list of places where a host can drive to a bar and be back home the same night. Plenty of good bars sit outside it.
When a hosted company cannot reach you, the usual next step is a member of staff, a phone full of questions typed the night before, and a lot of shouting over the room. That version of in-house trivia is what gives in-house trivia a bad name. The work is not the hosting. The work is writing forty questions, keeping score for fourteen teams on a paper pad, and settling the argument at table six about whether the answer was close enough.
Quizado takes those three jobs. Question packs supply the material, the app keeps score as answers arrive, and the correct answer appears on the TV so nobody is arguing with a barman. What is left for your staff is the part a human is good at: reading the question well, teasing the table in the corner, and deciding who wins the tie-break. Start free with the built-in packs and find out in four weeks whether Wednesday is worth keeping. Writing your own question sets starts on Trivia Pro.
Trivia Mafia does not publish venue pricing, so check their site for current pricing before you compare anything. What you can compare honestly is the shape of the two costs. A hosted night is one invoice and no labor. An in-house night is a software plan and some hours from somebody already on the rota.
Be honest about the hours. Building the night in Quizado takes roughly twenty minutes if you use the built-in packs, and less once you have a library. Running it takes the two hours the night runs, plus fifteen minutes to set the laptop on the TV and test the QR code. Call it three hours a week for one person who is already behind the bar. There is no marking afterwards, because the scores are final when the last round ends.
Whether that trade is good depends on one thing: whether anyone on your team wants to hold the microphone. If your assistant manager already does the karaoke and enjoys it, in-house is cheaper and the night becomes part of your bar. If nobody will do it, a hosted company is worth the fee and you should book one, from Trivia Mafia or anyone else who covers you.
A hosted night is the right answer more often than software companies like to admit.
These are the four reasons venues give when they take the night in-house.
Open a free account, pull a built-in question pack, and run it on a quiet Sunday with staff as the teams. Twenty minutes tells you whether the format fits your room. Writing your own question sets starts on Trivia Pro.
Print the QR code on the table tents, put the display on the biggest TV, and run four weeks. Keep the same night and the same start time so regulars can plan around it.
Open a league table on Trivia Pro or above so the standings carry across weeks. That is what turns a good Tuesday into a booked Tuesday, and it is the part that a one-off night never builds.
If you host for a trivia company, you already have the hardest skill in this business. You can hold a room of thirty people who came out to drink, and you can keep a quiz moving when a table gets loud. Question writing and scoring are the parts of the job that do not pay by the hour.
Quizado is a host account, not a venue account, so you can take it to your own bookings: the corporate party, the wedding rehearsal, the brewery anniversary, the two bars in your neighborhood that no company covers. Hospitality Group holds up to three venues in one account, each with its own teams and its own season table. From Trivia Pro up you can put your own logo on the display rather than anyone else's.
Nothing here asks you to stop working for the company that books you. Keep the weekly routes that pay well and use Quizado for the private events they do not sell, or for the night you have always wanted to run at your local. The free plan is enough to try it at a house party first.
They send a trained human being to your bar. Quizado does not, and no software will. An established company also arrives with an audience that follows its locations page, and with a host who has already learned what to do when a round dies. If you want entertainment delivered rather than operated, book a hosted company. Quizado is for the venues and the freelance hosts who would rather hold the console themselves.
New to running a night in-house? Start with the bar trivia software overview, then look at the trivia host app if you would rather run everything from a phone or laptop behind the bar.
Start free with the built-in packs, put the QR code on the TV and see how the room reacts. Writing your own question sets starts on Trivia Pro.
Shopping around? Here is how Quizado lines up against the rest of the market.
Download Quizado free and host your first trivia night tonight!
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