How to Start a Trivia Business and Keep the Whole Fee

Start with the two numbers that make this business worth a look. The 2026 venue sales sheet of one national hosted-trivia company starts at $195 per show, on agreements that typically last 16 weeks or more. The same company publishes its quizmaster pay scale in a handbook that is still online: $60 an event for a new host, $70 after 100 events and $80 after 250, listed as of October 2021.

Those are one company's figures, not a market survey. Older published rates sit lower: a 2014 trade article quoted $150 and $185 a night for two other trivia companies. Your city may pay less. Read the numbers as the shape of the deal: the bar pays one price, and well under half of it reaches the person holding the microphone.

The rest is not pure profit for the company. It pays for the selling, the question writing, the cover host and the client manager. Go independent and those jobs become yours, which is what the rest of this guide is about. What you stop paying is a share of every night. A Quizado subscription is a flat price: there is no fee per show and no cut of what the bar pays you.

Week one, build one complete game and run it for friends in a living room. You are testing your own pacing, not the questions. You will find out that eight questions per round is right, that you talk too long between rounds, and that you need a plan for the team who joins twenty minutes late. Fix all of that before a paying venue sees you.

Week two, walk into five bars at four in the afternoon and ask for the manager. Not the evening, not the weekend, and not by email. Bring one page: what the night is, how long it runs, what you need from them, and what you charge. Offer the first night free or at a reduced rate, and be explicit that it is a trial with a decision point after four weeks.

Weeks three and four, run the trial and count things. How many teams came, how many came back, what the bar took compared with the same weekday a month earlier. Bring those numbers to the renewal conversation. A venue manager who is shown a repeat-attendance figure will keep you far longer than one who is told the night felt good.

Published rates give you a range, not your local number. To find that one, ring two local trivia companies as a venue would and ask what they charge per night. That is the number your prospects are comparing you against. Price just under it while you have no track record, and raise it once you have three venues who renew.

Charge a flat fee per night rather than a share of the bar. A percentage sounds fair and is a nightmare in practice, because you cannot audit it and you will spend every renewal arguing about takings. A flat fee is easy to invoice, easy to budget for, and easy for a manager to approve without asking anyone above them.

For your first three bars, target places with a dead weeknight, a screen already on the wall, and no quiz within walking distance. Neighbourhood pubs, taprooms and smaller sports bars are the easiest yes. Chains usually need approval from a regional office and will take months, so leave them until you have proof to show.

You can personally host about four nights a week before the quality drops. Past that you either stop growing or you hire. The good news is that hiring is easier than it used to be, because the software does the scoring and the timing. What you are actually recruiting for is someone who is reliable, audible and comfortable in front of a room. Bar staff, drama students and local musicians are the usual pool.

Keep production centralised. You build the games, they run them. That protects the thing you are selling, which is a consistent night rather than a personality, and it means a host who leaves does not take the format with them. Saved games live in the account, so handing a night over is a scheduling task rather than a rebuild.

The kit list per host is short: a laptop or tablet, a charger, an HDMI cable and an adapter, a printed sheet of join QR codes, and a phone as a backup internet connection. Internet is required for the host device and the player phones on any game the phones play, so the backup connection is the one item people forget and regret. Family Face-Off, QuizoParty and Territory are the fallback that needs no signal, on every paid plan, from sets and nights downloaded in advance.

Then you already do the hard part in the room. You know the pacing, the tie-breaks and the team that argues every answer. What the company does for you is the other two jobs: it sold the bar and it wrote the quiz. Going on your own means doing both, and it means no cover host when you are ill, so line one up before you need one.

Read your agreement before you pitch anyone, and above all before you pitch a bar you already work in. Ask the company directly whether anything in it limits where you can host. Start with bars the company does not serve, so nobody can say you took a client.

Do the sum for your own week before you decide. Take what a bar near you pays per night, multiply by the nights you can sell, and take off a flat software plan and your question-writing time. Compare that with your current pay for the same nights. With one night a week the difference is modest. From two or three nights it is not.

Practise on the free plan: it runs a full Trivia game for up to 4 player phones, enough for the living-room test. When the first bar says yes, move to Pro. Pro has no player limit, plays the question sets you write yourself, adds Music Bingo and brings AI questions every month.

Business is the step for a host who is building a name. It puts your own logo on the big screen and the player phones, adds your fonts, colours and sounds, and runs leagues with a season table. Take it when your brand is what you are selling to the next bar.

One venue on your plan covers the whole route. Name it after your act instead of after a bar, and host under that name in as many bars as you like, one game at a time. Each host who runs a night at the same time as you needs a venue slot of their own, which you add to a paid plan. For a larger team of hosts, contact us. Being paid by bars to host, and paying other hosts to run your nights, is ordinary use of Quizado.