Corporate and private events

How events differ from your weekly night

If you can run a good weekly night, you can run an office party. The questions, the pacing and the reveal all carry over. What changes is everything around the game.

At a weekly night the crowd chose to come. At a holiday party, a third of the room would rather be at home, a few people are there because their manager is, and nobody knows the format. The questions need more footholds, the teams need mixing, and the night needs to end on time because the room is booked until nine.

The business side changes too. Someone books you weeks ahead, asks for a proposal, needs a W-9 before they can pay you, and pays 30 days after the event. None of it is hard. It just has to be done properly, because the person who hired you put their name on it.

Who books a host

The person who emails you is rarely the one who decided the company should have a party. Usually it is whoever got handed the job:

• An office manager or executive assistant planning the holiday party or a quarterly team event.
• Someone in HR running onboarding socials, a wellness week or a staff appreciation day.
• A professional event planner who needs entertainment for a conference evening, a client reception or an offsite.
• A team lead with a small budget and a vague brief: "something fun for the team that isn't bowling."
• For private events, the family member or friend organizing the party, or a wedding planner working for the couple.

What they have in common is that they are busy and nervous. They want someone who answers emails, turns up early, keeps it clean and makes them look good for having booked you. Being easy to work with will win you more repeat bookings than being the funniest host in town.

Your weekly regulars are the most overlooked source. Everyone at your Tuesday night works somewhere, and some of them will be the person handed the holiday party next year. Hosts in r/triviahosts say a single slide before the final scores, saying you host office parties and private events and how to reach you, has brought them more bookings than anything else they tried.

Pricing an event

Price events well above your weekly rate. A weekly fee is low because the night repeats: the venue pays it 50 times a year and you reuse your setup and your prep. An event is a one-off with a custom round, emails, a site visit, a set time and often your own equipment.

For comparison, one national trivia company lists in-person events for organizations at $499 for up to 60 people, $599 for up to 125 and $799 for up to 250, and another starts at $749. Those are company prices that include their host, questions and software, and they are a useful anchor when a client asks whether your quote is normal.

It also helps to think the way the client does, in cost per head. A $600 event for 60 people is $10 a person. Most organizers are comparing you with a catered lunch, an escape room or a cooking class, all of which cost more per person, so a sensible quote rarely sounds expensive from their side of the desk.

Things worth charging for separately

• A custom round about the company, the couple or the guest of honor. It is the part they remember, and it takes you an hour or two of research and writing.
• Bringing your own sound and screen. Many offices and private rooms have neither, or have a conference speakerphone that will not fill a room.
• Buying and wrapping prizes, charged at cost plus your time.
• Extra time beyond the agreed length, quoted per half hour so nobody argues on the night.
• Travel beyond a set distance.

Quote a little higher than feels comfortable. Hosts with years of event work say that if the first number does not make you slightly nervous, it is probably too low. You can always offer a discount for a charity or a repeat client. It is much harder to raise a price once you have said it out loud.

The proposal and the booking

When an organizer asks you to "send over some information", they want a one-page document that answers their questions and is easy to forward to whoever approves the spend. It should cover:

• What the event looks like: how long, how many rounds, what kinds of rounds, how teams play and how scores are shown.
• Two or three priced options, each clearly building on the one before.
• What is included and what is not: setup time, your equipment, the custom round, prizes.
• What you need from them: a screen or TV, power, a table, wifi details if players will use phones, and a rough headcount.
• Your deposit and cancellation terms.
• Two or three photos of a full, laughing room. Photos from a weekly night are fine until you have event photos. Ask people's permission before you use them.

Deposits, cancellations and getting paid

Take a deposit to hold the date. Half up front is common, with the balance due on the day or on net-15 or net-30 terms. Say in writing what happens if they cancel: for example, the deposit is kept if they cancel within 30 days of the event. Add what happens if you cannot make it (you find a replacement host or refund in full) and what happens if a storm closes the office.

Larger companies often need you set up as a vendor before they can pay you. That can mean a W-9, a certificate of insurance naming the company, and sometimes an online supplier form. Ask about this when they book, not after the event, or your invoice will sit in a queue for six weeks. The business basics guide covers invoices, contracts and insurance in more detail.

Send a short confirmation email once the details are agreed: date, start and end time, address and room, headcount, what you are bringing, the price and the payment terms. If the client has a contract of their own, read it for clauses about liability and cancellation before you sign.

Finding clients

The first event is the hardest to find. After that, most work comes from people who have been in a room you ran.

• Tell your weekly crowd you do events. Put it on the screen before the final scores and on a card on each table.
• Talk to the venues you already work with. Many restaurants, breweries and event spaces host private parties and company bookings. Ask the manager to mention you when someone books the room, and offer the venue a simple package: room, food, and you.
• Caterers, DJs, photographers and planners get asked "do you know anyone who does trivia?" Refer work to them and they will remember you.
• Directories such as GigSalad, The Bash and Thumbtack charge a fee or take a cut, and you compete on price with everyone else listed. They can be useful for your first few bookings and reviews.
• LinkedIn and local business groups are slow, but this is where office managers and HR people actually are. A short post with a photo after each event does more than a sales message.
• Direct emails to companies work occasionally. Keep them short, local and specific ("I run trivia nights for teams in the Riverside area; here is what a 60-minute holiday event looks like"), send one follow-up, then stop.

Give people somewhere to look you up. Your Brainflood Host Site (app.brainflood.com/h/your-name) shows your upcoming nights and venues, which tells an organizer you are active and real. A plain one-page website with your photo, a price range and an email address does the same job.

Writing the custom round

A round about the company, the couple or the person turning 60 is what the guests talk about afterwards. It is also the part that can go wrong, so treat it with care.

Ask the organizer for material two to three weeks ahead: a few facts about the company's history, the office, a product launch everyone remembers, the team's running jokes that are safe to repeat in public, and the names of a few people who would enjoy being the answer to a question. For a private party, ask for stories, places, nicknames, first jobs and family facts.

• Mix it with general rounds. A whole night about the company leaves out the person who started last week. One custom round, or a handful of custom questions spread through the night, is usually right.
• Write questions that a newer employee could guess. "What year did the company open its second office?" with a multiple choice gives everyone a way in.
• Never make anyone the butt of the joke, and never use anything that touches pay, layoffs, health, relationships or politics. If you are unsure, leave it out.
• Send the custom round to the organizer to check before the event. They will catch the fact that is wrong, out of date or awkward for reasons you could not know.
• Keep the general rounds broad. A corporate room often spans three generations, so give each round something for each of them.

Brainflood keeps your own questions alongside the library, and you can paste a round in from Google Sheets, Excel or a document, or upload a spreadsheet, with a preview before anything is saved. That is handy when an organizer sends you their facts in a spreadsheet. The general rounds can come from the 13,000-question library or from your own archive.

Running a corporate event

Before the day

Visit the room or ask for photos of it. Find out where the screen is, what it connects to, whether there is sound you can use, where the power sockets are, how the tables are laid out, and whether the wifi lets guests on. Office networks often block guest devices, so ask for guest wifi details or plan for paper answer sheets.

Check your plan limits against the headcount. On Brainflood the Free plan allows 30 players and 8 teams in a game, Starter 75 players and 20 teams, and Pro 200 players and 50 teams. A 120-person holiday party needs Pro, so sort that out before the day, not in the lobby.

On the day

Arrive at least 60 minutes early. You need time to set up, test the sound from the back of the room, get the game on the screen and sort out the one cable that does not fit. If the room has a smart TV or a streaming stick, you can open app.brainflood.com/tv in its web browser and type the game code, with no cable to your laptop. Bring an HDMI cable and printed answer sheets anyway.

Dress a step above the guests. Smart casual covers most offices. You want to look like the person who was hired to be there.

Mix the teams. People sit with the colleagues they already know, and the organizer usually wants the opposite. Agree on a method in advance: numbered tables, a color on each name badge, or departments split across tables. Five to eight people per team works well; bigger teams leave someone out of every conversation.

Start with something everyone can get right. A gentle first round settles the room and gets the quieter tables writing. Keep explanations short, read every question twice, and keep moving. A corporate crowd has drinks and conversation to get back to, and the event needs to finish when the organizer said it would.

Leave a 10-minute buffer at the start. Office events rarely begin on time, because people are getting food or waiting for a meeting to end. Run a warm-up question or two on the screen while people settle, rather than standing at the front waiting.

Paper, phones or both

Players never need an app or an account to play on a phone: they scan the QR code on the screen, type a name and pick a team. That works well for a mixed room, including people joining from other offices. Paper is often better when the wifi is doubtful, when the crowd skews older, or when the organizer would rather people looked up from their phones. You can also run some rounds on paper and others on phones. The print pack gives you answer sheets for every round, picture handouts and a host answer key.

Private parties, weddings and fundraisers

Private events use the same skills as corporate ones and need a lighter touch. The guests are friends and family, some of them have never played trivia, and the point is the person being celebrated, not the scoreboard.

• Keep it short. 60 to 90 minutes is plenty for a birthday, a shower or a reunion. Leave them wanting another round rather than checking the time.
• Make it about the guest of honor. A "this is your life" round about the birthday person, the couple or the retiring teacher is the reason they booked you. Get the facts from two people if you can; families remember things differently.
• Write for the youngest and the oldest. A room with eight-year-olds and grandparents needs questions both can answer, and teams that mix the generations. Picture and music rounds help people who do not think of themselves as trivia players.
• Make it easier than your weekly night. First-timers want to get things right. Aim for most teams getting most questions.
• At weddings, fit around the day. A short game during dinner or between courses works better than a full quiz before the dancing. Agree the slot with the planner or the venue coordinator, who will be running to a timetable.

Fundraisers bring one extra question: money. If the charity wants to charge entry and give prizes, that can count as gambling or a raffle under state law, and many states require charities to hold a gaming or raffle permit. Make sure the organizer has checked their state's rules. It is their event and their permit, but you do not want your name on a night that gets shut down.

Online and hybrid events

Remote and hybrid teams still book trivia, usually for shorter events at lower prices. Company list prices for online events run from $249 to $399. Hosts who ran online games through the pandemic report that most players prefer being in a room together, so expect online events to be a smaller part of the work, not the main part.

The setup is simple. Run the video call on one device. In Brainflood, players anywhere can join the same game with the five-character code at joinplay.net or by scanning the QR, so the people in the office and the people at home play together. Open the TV page in a browser tab and share that tab on Zoom or Teams so remote players see what the room sees.

Online events need tighter pacing than in-person ones. Keep them to 45 to 60 minutes, put teams in breakout rooms if the platform allows it so they can talk, and test your audio and screen share with the organizer a day or two ahead.

After the event

Send a thank-you email the next morning. Include the final standings, a few photos if people agreed to them, and one line asking whether they would like to do it again next quarter or next year.

Brainflood can produce a results poster and certificates for the winning team after the game, which organizers often share on an internal channel. If the client wants the questions as slides for their records or a later event, any game can be exported to PowerPoint.

On the Pro plan your own logo and business name appear on the TV and the printouts, and Business adds your colors or removes Brainflood's branding entirely. On the Free plan the TV carries a full Brainflood watermark, and on Starter a small one. Whether that matters depends on the client. For a company event, your own name on the screen looks more professional.

If you have tip prompts set up for your weekly nights, you can switch them off for a corporate booking where tipping would be awkward.

The event calendar and repeat work

Corporate work is seasonal, and the bookings come in well ahead of the dates.

Start telling people you do holiday parties in late summer. By November the good December dates are gone.

Repeat clients are worth more than new ones. A company that enjoyed its holiday party may want something each quarter. Offer a small discount for booking several dates at once: it gives you a little predictable income and saves both of you the proposal stage next time. Do not count on it, though. Office managers change jobs, budgets get cut, and the next person may never have heard of you. Keep in touch with the person who booked you; when they move to a new company, they often bring you with them.

A booking checklist

1. Date, start and end time, address, room, and the name and phone number of the person on site.
2. Headcount, and whether anyone joins remotely.
3. Screen, sound, power, tables and guest wifi: what they have, what you bring.
4. The custom round: material requested, written, and checked by the organizer.
5. Content limits: anything off limits, and how clean it needs to be.
6. Prizes: who buys them and what they are.
7. Price, deposit, balance, payment method and terms, in writing.
8. Vendor setup: W-9, certificate of insurance, supplier forms.
9. Paper, phones or both, and printed answer sheets packed either way.
10. The thank-you email, scheduled for the next morning.