PULTEVENT
Pub quiz software: 7 rounds a landlord can run every week
Tuesday, half seven, a pub on a side street in Leeds. The pencils have gone missing again (a box of twenty bought on the first of the month, three left by the second week), last week's answer sheets are still wedged under a beer mat by the dartboard, and the quizmaster is marking round four at the end of the bar while table six argues about a capital city. Anyone who has run a weekly quiz knows the rest of the evening by heart.
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This page is for the person who owns the night, not a hired host doing one-offs. You want a quiz that runs every week without eating your Monday, and without paper. Here is how I would set one up with PULTEVENT.
The quizmaster's laptop runs the console in a browser. The pub's TVs show the questions over HDMI. Each team scans a QR code on the screen with one phone and answers from it: no app, no account. That phone needs a connection, either the pub Wi-Fi or mobile data. Scoring happens on the server, so the marking at the end of the bar goes away.
Seven rounds for a weekly pub quiz
1 General knowledge round
Ten questions you write in the quiz builder. Each question shows four options on the team phones, bars climb on the TVs as tables answer, and a 20, 30 or 45-second countdown closes it. The right answer turns green.
How to run it. Read every question aloud even though it is on the screen. The regulars at the bar will not look up otherwise.
It is the backbone of the night, and it scores itself.
2 Picture round
Photos in the quiz builder instead of photocopies: flags, famous faces, landmarks from odd angles, cropped album covers. Every TV in the pub shows the same picture at the same size.
How to run it. Crop tight. A picture round is only fun if the answer takes a second look.
No handouts means no Tuesday afternoon at the copier, and no picture round left on a wet table.
3 Music round
The quiz builder takes audio as well as pictures, so the intro round is a clip per question. Play the clip, open the answers on the phones, reveal.
How to run it. Keep the clips short and check the volume from the back table. Music rounds die when half the pub cannot hear them.
Music rounds are the ones people talk about on the way home.
4 Board final
Super Smarts is a board with categories across the top and point values below. Teams take turns picking a square. Put your own questions in with the custom questions button.
How to run it. Let the team at the bottom of the table pick first. The biggest squares can swing the night.
A final where the last-place team can still win keeps every table in the pub until the end.
5 Guess the regular
For a special night, a Christmas quiz or an anniversary, Guess the Photo shows one photo full screen and the pub guesses who it is before you reveal the name. Collect baby photos from your regulars and the staff.
How to run it. Start with the bar staff. It gets a cheer and makes the regulars more willing to send theirs.
It turns a quiz into a night about the pub itself.
6 League scoreboard
The team scoreboard keeps each table's points on the TVs through the evening, with a label for each round. At the end you can download the results as a spreadsheet, which makes a monthly league table easy to keep.
How to run it. Keep team names the same week to week and print the league table by the bar.
A league brings teams back on the Tuesday they would have skipped.
7 Interval raffle
Every phone that joins gets a three-digit ticket, and the drum on the TV picks a winner. Three draws are three clicks.
How to run it. Draw one small prize at half time and one at the end. Tell tables they need to stay to collect.
The interval is when teams leave. A draw at half time is when they do not.
No more marking at the bar
Answers come in from phones and the correct option lights up on the TV when time runs out. You read the next question instead of adding up sheets.
Teams by table
One phone per table. The captain taps, the table argues. Team names and totals sit on the scoreboard all night.
A picture round without printing
Photos go into the quiz builder once and appear on every screen in the pub. No more stapling handouts at five o'clock.
A free raffle for the interval
Each phone that joins gets a numbered ticket. Draw a bar tab at half time and everyone stays for the second half.
Why phones and not paper
Paper has three problems: marking takes the quizmaster away from the room, handwriting starts arguments, and the pencils walk. With one phone per table, answers are in when the countdown ends, the correct one appears on every screen, and the scores update while you are still talking.
Some regulars will grumble about phones for a week. Let a younger teammate be the captain and the grumbling stops.
Writing a quiz every single week
Forty questions a week is the real cost of a pub quiz. Keep a fixed structure (general knowledge, pictures, music, a board final) and fill it in the quiz builder on the same afternoon every week. An evening can carry over questions from the one before, so a question that nobody got can come back next time.
The ready-made quiz decks in the platform are mostly in Russian today, so for a UK pub every round is your own. For a local pub that is the selling point: nobody else in town has your questions.
Ties and disputes
Two tables level at the end is the most exciting moment of a quiz, as long as you have a plan. Keep one tie-breaker question with a number for an answer, closest wins, and read it from the laptop so there is no scrap of paper to lose.
Disputes are fewer with phones, because the answer a team tapped is the answer they gave. When a question itself was wrong, and one will be every few weeks, give the point to everyone and say so on the mic. Regulars respect a quizmaster who owns a mistake.
Your TVs, your Wi-Fi, their phones
Any TV with an HDMI input works. If you have several screens on a splitter, all of them show the same stage window. Put the Wi-Fi password on the table tents; teams can also answer on mobile data. The one thing you cannot do is run the quiz with no connection at all.
Starting a quiz from nothing
If the pub has never had a quiz, do not start with forty questions and a league. Start with three rounds, a raffle and a board final, on the same night every week, and put a poster in the loo. A new quiz night needs a few weeks to find its regulars, and the ones that last tend to be the ones that never moved night or start time in the first month.
Keep the entry free at first. Charge per team later, once there are teams worth charging.
The interval
The console has a DJ deck built in: two decks, a crossfader, EQ and set recording, opened in its own tab so nothing leaks onto the TVs. Play something during the interval, run the raffle draw, and bring the room back with a track they know.
Ten minutes is plenty. Longer, and the second half starts with half the teams.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, an event host since 2014 with more than 500 events behind him. The TOP 100 Awards named him best host in Moscow in 2024 and in Saint Petersburg in 2023. He wrote the console for his own nights first: pultevent.ru/en.
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How to run a weekly pub quiz on your TVs
- 1
Write the week's rounds in the quiz builder: general knowledge, pictures, music and the board final.
- 2
Connect the quiz laptop to the pub TVs and check that every screen shows the stage window.
- 3
As teams arrive, put the QR code up and have one phone per table scan in.
- 4
Run the rounds, adding each table's points to the scoreboard as they come in.
- 5
Draw a raffle prize at half time, then play the board final with the last-placed team picking first.
- 6
Announce the winners, download the results and update the monthly league table.
FAQ
Does every player need a phone?
Do teams need to install anything?
Can it run without internet?
Are there ready-made questions in English?
Can we keep a league across weeks?
Does the raffle count as a lottery?
Can one quizmaster run it alone?
What does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
All audience interactions, a second screen and timing in one app. Guests join by QR — internet is needed for you and for them.
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