We all love our trivia, and started our particular version of it way back in 2007 when east coast transplant Daniel Burns came on out to the great city of Chicago!
While you may have experienced and enjoyed our vision for using trivia as a way to bring people together (and have a great time), you might not realize how much trivia you encounter in your day-to-day life. Your local news might have a soft segment with random fun facts, like what cities let you drink in public. You might be at the proverbial office water cooler and have a coworker inform you that tablecloths were first used as communal napkins. You might be sitting down with your family to play Trivial Pursuit or other knowledge based games.
But for many, trivia is associated with team trivia events. And the origin of team trivia can be found with the history of Pub Trivia.
The Birth of Pub Trivia
Pub trivia first became a social gathering in the United Kingdom. While its exact origins are unknown, it likely started as an extension of bar arguments and discussions regarding obscure facts. There’s a reason why The Guinness Book of World Records has its name - it was literally written by workers at the Guinness Brewery in 1951.
By the late 1950s, over 4,000 people were participating in various organized pub trivia events, largely in Merseyside and Lancashire. In 1976, Burns and Porter was founded, establishing 32 quiz teams with three different leagues. The selling point for businesses was to attract customers on slow nights at pubs, providing entertainment and encouraging the purchase of a pint or two.
Over the next few years, the popularity of pub trivia in the United Kingdom skyrocketed. From 32 teams, Burns and Porter soon had over 10,000 teams, and the BBC began taping and airing trivia-based television programming.
But across the pond, bar trivia was nonexistent. But in the 1980s, trivia finally got it’s foot in the door of American culture.
The 1980s: The Rise of Pub Quiz Culture
In 1979, Canadian journalists Chris Haney and Scott Abbott were trying to find an alternate version of the game Scrabble after finding their Scrabble board was missing pieces. Fittingly, they were at a bar and brainstormed ideas over a few beers, ultimately coming up with the idea of a trivia-based board game.
In 1981, Trivia Pursuit was released and introduced recreational trivia to the American public. But another trivia phenomenon presented itself - the revival of Jeopardy.
Jeopardy was first created in 1964, and was cancelled in 1975. It had a brief revival in 1979, but only lasted one season. But in 1984 they debuted a revamped version of the show with a Canadian broadcaster-turned-game show host named Alex Trebek, and the rest was history. It also made trivia even more popular to the American public.
Like Burns and Porter, local bar owners realized that they could take advantage of this new interest in trivia to bring in patrons on off-days like Tuesdays and Wednesdays where nights were slow.
These bars experimented with different approaches, such as introducing themed rounds focused on specific topics or events. The concept of themed rounds with questions solely focused on movies, music, sports and other popular topics helped establish the popularity of pub trivia in America, which only would grow.
The Growth of American Pub and Bar Quizzes
Going into the 90s, Trivial Pursuit was still widely popular, and more and more bars were using trivia as social events to bring in customers.
It’s no surprise that social gathering locations, such as bars and taverns, worked so well for team trivia events. Trivia is, at its heart, social. It encourages lively discussion and, yes, disagreements, but half of the fun comes from going back and forth with friends to find the right answer.
And a few pints to lubricate the conversation doesn’t hurt.
Most bars would host their own individualized trivia nights, with questions written by an employee or a freelance trivia host, but by the 2000s companies that ran standardized trivia events at multiple locations with unique formats and engaging hosts began appearing across the country.
Whaddayaknow? Trivia, for example, was one of the first established Team Trivia companies founded in Chicago in 2008. Since then they’ve hosted hundreds of thousands of events at thousands of locations, and are only seeing the interest in team trivia increasing with every year.
The State of Trivia Today
Pub trivia has now strongly established its value to business owners - and the best part is, it isn’t isolated to just bars. Private events, corporations parties, and social gatherings of all sorts use Team Trivia as an icebreaker, or just a fun way to spend a few hours with coworkers and friends.
While trivia has been around as long as we’ve had history and culture, pub trivia, and general team trivia, has found a way to take knowledge and make it fun for everyone who participates. Be sure to take advantage of our many team trivia events at the venue nearest to you!
