PULTEVENT
Trade show booth games: 7 ways to stop people walking past
Day two of the expo, just after eleven. Gray carpet, tote bags, lanyards, and a steady river of people looking at their phones as they walk. On a big screen at the corner of one stand, a dozen small cars are sliding sideways around a neon parking lot, each one steered from someone's phone. A man with a coffee stops, watches one lap, and asks the person next to him how you join. He's on the stand for the next twenty minutes.
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I've hosted on exhibition stands, and the hard part is never the pitch. It's the four seconds in which a passer-by decides whether your stand is worth slowing down for. A static banner doesn't win those seconds. Movement does, and so does the sight of other people clearly having fun. Games on the stand screen give you both, and they give your sales team a natural reason to start a conversation.
Everything here runs from a laptop browser connected to the booth screen. Visitors scan a QR code and play from their own phones with no app and no registration. Their phones need internet, which at a busy exhibition hall is the thing to plan for first, so there's a short section on that below.
Seven booth game formats for a trade show stand
1 The attract loop
Between games, the screen plays your product slides from an uploaded PPTX, mixed with a splash screen that says what's on and when the next draw is.
How to run it. Keep the deck to six or eight slides and switch back to the QR join screen after it, so the loop always ends with an invitation.
The screen never goes dark or shows a desktop, and your message runs even when the staff are busy talking.
2 Ninety-second product quiz
Five questions about your product, answered on phones. Short enough that people finish it standing in the aisle.
How to run it. Make the correct answers your key selling points. Someone who picked the right one has just told themselves why your product matters.
A visitor who has answered five questions about you is far warmer than one who took a leaflet.
3 Drift Arena heats
Up to twelve cars on one 3D track, each steered from a phone. The gas is automatic; players steer with the two halves of the screen and hold a big drift button to slide.
How to run it. Keep one staff member at the screen calling the race like a commentator. Noise attracts people more than the picture does.
This is what stops the aisle. Nobody walks past twelve cars going sideways without looking.
4 Leaderboard of the day
Use the team scoreboard as a board for the day: each heat winner goes on it with their points, so a visitor at nine in the morning is still competing with someone who arrives at four.
How to run it. Bring the leaderboard up on screen between heats and read out the top three whenever a crowd forms.
Seeing your name on a screen at a trade show is oddly powerful. People come back to check they're still on it.
5 Hourly prize draw
Everyone who joined by QR holds a raffle ticket on their phone. On the hour, the draw runs live on the stand screen.
How to run it. Announce the next draw time on the splash screen and ask winners to collect in person. That's your conversation opener.
Visitors plan their return to your stand. A sales team gets a second, warmer chance with the same person.
6 Welcome screen for booked meetings
When a key client arrives for a scheduled meeting, a splash screen shows their name and company for a minute.
How to run it. Prepare the screens before the show opens and keep them in order of the meeting schedule.
It costs thirty seconds and makes the person feel the stand was expecting them, which it was.
7 End-of-day final
The day's best drivers come back for one last Drift Arena race. The top three finish on a podium on screen.
How to run it. Tell qualifiers the final time when they make the leaderboard. Put a better prize on this race than on the hourly draw.
It fills the stand in the quiet last hour, when neighboring stands are packing up.
Movement that catches the eye
A 3D race or a live leaderboard on the screen draws people in from the aisle far better than a looping video.
Join in ten seconds
One QR on the screen, phone camera, done. No download stands between a curious visitor and playing.
Your product in the quiz
Write five quick questions about what you sell. Visitors learn the key points while trying to win.
A reason to come back
An hourly prize draw and an end-of-day final bring the same people back to the stand.
Staffing the stand around the games
Games do the stopping. People still do the selling. I'd have one person who owns the screen and the laptop, calling races, running draws and inviting passers-by to scan. Everyone else on the stand talks to people who are waiting for the next heat or who just finished the quiz.
The best opening line on a busy stand is not about your product. 'You were close on question four' works better than any rehearsed pitch, and it leads straight into the thing question four was about.
Leads: what this does and doesn't do
The platform isn't a lead capture tool, and I'd rather say that plainly. It gets people onto your stand and talking. Keep your badge scanner or contact form alongside it and scan people while they wait for their heat. That combination beats either on its own.
Internet at an exhibition hall
Exhibition Wi-Fi is famously crowded by the second morning. The laptop running the stand needs a solid connection, so book a wired line or a dedicated connection from the organizer if you can. Visitors' phones need internet too, and most will simply use mobile data. There's no offline mode, so test signal on your actual stand during build-up day.
Keep the screen output simple: laptop to screen over HDMI, stage window full screen, console on the laptop only.
Language and content
At an international show, each visitor's phone shows guest screens in its own language. The host console is being localized into English. Built-in quiz decks are mostly in Russian at the moment, which matters little here, because the only quiz worth running on your stand is one about your own product.
Upload your slide deck as a PPTX file and it plays on the stage screen between games.
Pricing and a test run
Try the setup in the office before the show on the free 3-day demo; no card is needed. After that it's a one-time license rather than a subscription, and the price is at https://pultevent.ru/en/. Sign up at https://pultevent.ru/login.html?mode=register&next=/app/
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted events since 2014: more than 500 weddings, office parties and birthdays. TOP 100 Awards named him best host in Moscow in 2024 and in Saint Petersburg in 2023, and he still runs his own nights from this console. More at pultevent.ru/en.
How to set up games on a trade show booth
- 1
Write a five-question product quiz and prepare a short slide deck for the attract loop.
- 2
Book a reliable internet connection for the stand and test mobile signal on build-up day.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the booth screen and open the stage window full screen.
- 4
Assign one person to run the screen, the races and the draws.
- 5
Alternate the attract loop, quizzes and Drift Arena heats, with a draw on the hour.
- 6
Close each day with a final race for the leaderboard's top drivers.
FAQ
Do visitors have to download an app?
How many people can play at once?
Does it collect visitor contact details?
What size screen do we need?
Can we show our own presentation?
What if the hall Wi-Fi is bad?
How much does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
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