Equipment for hosts, from nothing to a full rig

What you need for the first night

A laptop, the venue's TV and the venue's sound. If the bar has a mic that works and a TV you can use, you can run a trivia night with nothing else but a bag of pens.

Use a laptop rather than a phone. You can join a game or try one with friends from a phone, but running a 20-team night from one is hard work: a small screen, a mic in the other hand, scores to confirm and a TV to keep an eye on. A laptop gives you room to see the question, the answers and the scores at once, and it can drive the TV over a cable if the TV has no browser of its own.

Wait to buy anything until you have run a few nights. What you need depends on your rooms. One host's first purchase is a speaker because the bar's mic is dead; another's is a long HDMI cable because the only usable TV is across the room. You will know which you are after two or three weeks.

Four kits, from borrowed to owned

These build on each other. Most weekly hosts stop at the second or third. The fourth is for hosts who do private events, outdoor nights or karaoke, where the venue can't be relied on for anything.

Each kit adds to the one before. Most weekly hosts stop at the second or third. Tap a kit for the full list.

Software is a separate cost. Brainflood's Free plan covers three games a month; Starter is $19 a month for 12 games and Pro is $39 for unlimited. The full comparison is on the pricing page.

Sound comes first

If you only upgrade one thing, make it the sound. If the back tables can't hear the questions, nothing on the screen makes up for it.

Wired beats wireless for anything you can wire. Bluetooth speakers drop out, and they add a delay you can hear in a music round. Hosts who have tried both often say they found wired easier and stopped fighting with pairing. Wireless mics are the exception worth paying for once you want to walk the room.

Handheld or headset? A headset leaves both hands for the laptop and the answer sheets. A handheld lets you mute yourself by lowering it, and hand it to a player for a tiebreak or a birthday announcement. Many hosts use a handheld on a stand and pick it up when they move.

Echoey rooms are the hardest. A big hard-walled room swallows every joke, and turning the speaker up makes it worse. Two speakers at a lower volume, spread out, beat one loud one. A second speaker across the room can be linked with a cable or a wireless XLR link (hosts report $60 to $200 for these).

And don't overdo it. A room where the speaker is so loud people can't talk at the table is a room people leave. Set the volume from the back table, then check it from the front.

Screens: the venue TV, your own TV or a projector

The venue's TV is the easy option and the one you will use most. If it has a web browser, open app.brainflood.com/tv on it and type your game code, and it follows your whole night with no cable to your laptop. If it doesn't, run an HDMI cable from your laptop. The event night walkthrough has both methods step by step.

Bring your own screen when the venue's can't be seen from half the tables, is needed for the game, or doesn't exist. A used TV on a rolling stand is the most dependable. It works in daylight, it fits through doors and it doesn't care how bright the room is. Hosts report picking up a used TV and cart for around $50 to $100 when they shop around.

A projector throws a much bigger picture for the money and weighs less, but it needs a dim room and a pale flat wall or a screen. On a patio before sunset it's close to invisible. Good for a function room with blinds, poor for a bright bar.

A small portable USB-C monitor (15 to 17 inches, roughly $100 to $250) works for a living-room party or as a host-side screen, and not for a room of 80.

Several TVs in one room

Hosts ask about this a lot, and the usual answers have been splitters left behind the bar or a second laptop with someone pressing Next twice.

Check for browsers first. Every TV that can open app.brainflood.com/tv can show the game: type the same code on each and they all follow along, with no limit on how many. A $30 to $60 streaming stick with a browser brings an older TV into the same setup.

For TVs that can't run a browser at all:

• An active HDMI splitter (one with its own power supply) sends your laptop's picture to two or four TVs. Reliable, cheap ($20 to $60), but you need a cable run to each screen, and long runs need good cables.
• A wireless HDMI kit (a transmitter and one or more receivers, usually $100 and up) avoids the cables. Hosts who use them say the main failure is power: run the receiver from a wall socket, not the TV's USB port.

Pick one TV to carry the game sound and turn the rest down, or the music round echoes around the room slightly out of step.

Paper night supplies

Most trivia is still played on paper, and paper has its own kit.

Printing. A home printer pays off quickly for answer sheets, which are black and white and printed every week. Color picture handouts are where ink money goes; plenty of hosts print those at a print shop instead. Hosts who bought a printer to save money report mixed results, so price your ink before you buy the printer. Brainflood's print pack, free on every plan, gives you a ZIP of answer sheets for every round, numbered picture handouts, a check-in poster, a join poster and table tents, a scorer worksheet and a host answer key, ready to print.

Pens. Buy them by the box. Short golf pencils are cheap enough that nobody minds when they walk off. A cup of pens on each table saves you a trip round the room every round.

Clipboards. Bar tables are wet. A stack of cheap clipboards keeps the sheets readable, and some hosts have teams swap clipboards to mark each other's answers, which saves time and gets tables talking.

For marking. A folder per round so sheets don't get mixed, a small clip light or desk lamp (bars are dark where hosts sit), and a kitchen timer or your phone's.

What karaoke adds

Singing is harder on gear than talking. A speaker that's fine for reading questions can distort when someone belts a chorus, and a singer who sounds bad through your system is less likely to come back next week. If you plan to run karaoke, spend more on the speakers than you would for trivia.

• Two mics on separate channels, for duets. Wireless is worth it here.
• A singer monitor, so the person at the mic can read the words while facing the room. An active HDMI splitter feeds it and the room's TV the same picture at the same moment.
• A couple of colored LED lights aimed at the singing spot. They do more for the mood than they cost.
• A connection that can stream video. Test a few videos on the venue Wi-Fi before the night, because your phone's hotspot may not keep up.

Brainflood's karaoke plays a YouTube karaoke video for each singer on the TV, so the lyrics are whatever that video shows. Some KJs prefer a licensed karaoke library and dedicated software, which is a separate monthly cost.

Getting it all there

Gear you dread carrying is gear you leave at home. A full kit is two speakers, stands, a mixer, a mic case, a laptop and a folder of answer sheets, and hosts talk about making four trips from the car. A rolling bag for the small things and a folding hand truck for the speakers turn that into one.

At a weekly venue, ask whether you can leave something there: a mic and cable plugged into the house mixer, a splitter behind the TV, a box of pens behind the bar. Plenty will say yes to a small box.

Buying sensibly

• Buy after your first few nights, once you know what your rooms lack.
• Buy used where it's safe. Dynamic mics and passive cables last for decades; check speakers and wireless systems in person before paying.
• Buy two of anything small and cheap that can end a night: HDMI adapter, audio cable, mic cable.
• Keep every receipt. Equipment is a business expense for a self-employed host. See business basics for the tax side.
• Playing recorded music in the venue relies on the venue's music licenses, and not every venue holds them. Ask. Business basics covers this too.

Packing checklist

Run through it before you leave the house.