How to Restart Your Quiz Night After Summer

Quiz nights go quiet over the summer. People are in beer gardens, on holiday, or watching something on a big screen instead. Teams that turned up every week in February suddenly haven't been in since June.

September is when you get them back. The nights draw in, the football is on properly again, and people start looking for a reason to be in the pub on a weeknight. Here is how I restart a quiz night so it comes back stronger than it went away.

Pick a date and never move it

Same night, same time, every week, starting from a fixed relaunch date. Write it everywhere.

The single biggest killer of a quiz night is inconsistency. If people have to check whether it is on, they stop coming. If it starts at half eight one week and nine the next, they arrive late, and then everyone arrives late.

Pick the date three weeks out. That gives you enough runway to tell people properly.

Tell people three weeks before, not three days

Three weeks is the window. Long enough that teams can put it in the group chat and arrange a babysitter, short enough that they haven't forgotten.

What actually works, in order:

1. The teams you already had. If you kept a league last season, you have their team names and probably a WhatsApp group or a Facebook contact. Message them directly. This is worth more than every poster combined.
2. Local Facebook groups. Not just the pub's page — the village or town group, the "what's on" groups. That is where people who don't already follow you will see it.
3. A poster on the door and one behind the bar. Everyone who drinks there in the next three weeks will see it.
4. The bar staff. Tell them the date and get them mentioning it when they serve. Free, and it works.
5. Table cards. A small card on each table for a fortnight beforehand.

What to put on the poster

Keep it to six things and make them big enough to read from a few feet away:

• The night and the start time
• The date it comes back
• The price per person
• The prize, and the jackpot figure if you have one
• Max team size
• The pub name

That is it. No paragraph explaining the rounds. Nobody reads it.

If you have a rolling jackpot sitting at a decent number, put that in the biggest type on the page. A jackpot at £180 does more to fill a room than any amount of wording about how good the questions are.

Make the relaunch night easy, not hard

This is the mistake I see most often. People want to come back with a showstopper, so they write a hard quiz to prove the quality is there.

Don't. Half the room has not answered a quiz question since June. Make the first night back a little easier than usual — the strong teams still win, but the casual tables score respectably and decide it was a good night out. That is what gets them back the week after.

Save the difficult one for week three, when the habit has re-formed.

Restart the jackpot properly

You have a decision to make: roll the summer jackpot over, or reset it.

My advice is roll it. A jackpot that has been sat there since June is the strongest possible reason for people to come back, and it costs you nothing — the money is already collected. Advertise the figure. Once word gets round that there is £200 sitting on the table, teams turn up who have never been before.

If you are starting a quiz night from scratch and have no jackpot yet, start building one from night one. Split the entry fee: part goes out as that night's prize, the rest goes in the pot. It grows on its own and it is the single best retention tool I know of.

Start the league on week one

A one-off quiz is a nice night. A league is a habit.

Run the league from the first week back rather than "once we see how it goes". The whole point is that teams don't want to drop down the table by skipping a week, and that only bites if they are on the table from the start.

Announce the season length up front — say, twelve weeks to Christmas — and put a prize on the overall winner. A finish line people can see is worth more than an open-ended table that never ends.

Our Quiz League feature handles the scoring and the standings if you would rather not keep it on a spreadsheet, and teams can check their position between weeks.

Ask the landlord for a proper prize

Before you relaunch, have the conversation about the prize budget. The quiz fills the pub on the quietest night of the week and the bar takes the money at half time, so it is reasonable to ask.

A bar tab, a bottle, a meal for the winning team — whatever they can stand. And always, always have a booby prize for last place. Keep it low value and make it funny. It takes the sting out of finishing bottom and it is usually the biggest cheer of the night.

The first four weeks are the ones that count

Momentum is everything with a relaunch. If weeks one to four are consistent, on time and good fun, the quiz is re-established and it will carry itself through to Christmas. If one of them is cancelled or starts late, you are back to square one.

A few things that help:

• Photograph the winners every week and put it on the pub's socials. Free advertising, and people like seeing their local.
• Post the league table after each night so teams see where they sit.
• Name the teams out loud when you read the scores. Half the fun of a quiz is the quiz master reading out a daft team name.
• Have the quiz ready before the day. A rushed quiz shows, and week one is the worst possible week to wing it.

That last one is the reason this site exists. If you would rather not spend the run-up to your relaunch writing 51 questions and building a picture round, our packs come with three standard rounds, a music round with the playlist QR code, a picture round and the answer sheets, all ready to print.

Have a look at the full format if you want the whole thing start to finish, or grab the free sample quiz and run that as your first night back.

Mitch and Harry