The Critical Importance of Timing in Live Trivia Events

There are many factors which contribute to the success – or failure – of a live trivia event. Obviously the questions themselves are critical, as are the host, venue and even the audience. However, whether it’s for a team building exercise, brand awareness event, corporate entertainment or a standard pub quiz, every live trivia event lives or dies by the clock.

As discussed in earlier posts, in order to keep people engaged and happy a trivia event needs to be both fun and swift. Nobody likes to sit through an event that’s dragging- especially one that’s supposed to an entertaining break from the office! Below are the biggest factors to consider as far as timing, to ensure the trivia event is run efficiently & effectively:

Announcing Questions – There shouldn’t be a ridiculously long interlude between trivia questions, but this is the one time where patience is truly important, and speed isn’t the objective. After a trivia question is announced, teams need a moment to discuss & collaborate, before finally deciding on an answer; these are critical goals of a trivia team building event, and shouldn’t be rushed in an effort to get on to the next question.

Submitting Answer Sheets – The event can’t move forward until all of the answer sheets are turned in. If you have every been to a trivia night before, though, you know that there are always – ALWAYS – laggards. Not only are teams who are slow to hand in their answer sheets holding up the entire event, but other teams will instantly suspect them of cheating- or at the very least resent the fact that they were “given more time” to come up with answers. To keep the event both efficient and fair, the host needs to be firm and set clear time limits for submitting answer sheets.

Scoring – Once the answer sheets have been submitted, they must be scored quickly, so that the fun may continue for attendees. A laptop with MS Excel is really useful here, especially for larger groups. At my trivia company in New York City, we really take advantage of this “down time” during the event to encourage socializing- we crank up the music and encourage folks to mingle, grab a drink etc. However, attendees want to play and win trivia, so don’t dilly dally with the scoring.

If the trivia event has “special rounds” of trivia such as a picture round, video round, audio round etc., time limits should also be announced to set expectations for attendees. It’s always a good idea to let the audience know that someone’s got their eye on the clock- especially when many trivia events are held at night, and participants have families to get home to.

What are some other important time consumers to consider at trivia events?