Should I Charge for My Trivia Event?

Just so we are all on the same page. We are talking about whether or not you should charge for a trivia event at a bar, brewery, or coffee shop, not a full-blown trivia night held for a charity. If you are doing a fundraiser, then of course you should charge.

We are talking about whether or not to charge for an event at your bar. Like a lot of questions, the answer to this one is “it depends.” The expectations of your customers are going to increase if you charge. The more you charge, the higher those expectations will be. Also, by charging a fee to play trivia you might find people are willing to spend less on food and beverage.

Let’s say you decide not to charge to play trivia and you host an event where seating is first-come first-seated then your guests will not have a high expectation of winning large prizes and will be there for the fun and love of the theme of the trivia. In our experience, we would see a significant bump in crowd size and food and beverage sales.

Let’s say you are hosting a very popular theme, like one on our Best Seller list, so it would not be unreasonable to charge $5 or so per person to reserve a seat. Taking and managing reservations will add to your time invested in the event but it could well lead to a nice profit.

I would not recommend charging merely to play without taking reservations or having large prizes for the top teams.

Let us know what your experiences are with charging for trivia. Leave a comment below.