Most people who try this skip to the microphone. The ones who are still hosting a year later did these in sequence.
Everything starts with a setup call and a training session on the software. You install the program on a Windows laptop, download a game, run it in preview, and practice at home on your own TV. Your 30-day free trial does not start until that training is done, so you are not spending trial days learning menus.
A competitive sports bar and a family restaurant are different venues. Mind Games Trivia rewards the regulars who come to win. Quizzly is single answer, with nothing to guess from. Smarty Pants Trivia has no risk at all and keeps the tables in the back in the game. You can run more than one format, but start with one.
Go on a slow night and talk to the manager, not the bartender. Bring a one-page offer: the format, the night, what it costs the venue, what you need from them (a TV input, a table, a mic stand), and what you will do to promote it. Offer a trial run. A finished show on a screen is a different conversation from a stack of printouts. We coach you on this part, because it is where most new hosts stall.
Arrive early. Laptop on the TV, sound check, walk the venue with the pregame music playing. Register the teams, keep the pace, enter the scores, call the standings between rounds, make the reveal a reveal. Settle up and confirm next week before you pack the laptop. Reliability is the whole pitch: a venue that promotes a Tuesday show and has no host that Tuesday will not promote it again.
One laptop and one subscription cover four nights a week. The second venue is easier than the first, because now you have a venue to point to. Prizes are usually $10, $15 and $20 gift cards to the venue itself, which puts the winners back in the building next week.
Once two or three venues are steady, you have something no operator and no content service can sell: screens in front of the same local crowd, four times a night, three nights a week. The software runs a sponsor slide before every round on every screen in the venue. A local business that does not compete with your venues can buy a package across all your shows. How it works, what the rules are, and how to pitch it are on the round sponsors page.
It is not a franchise. No territories, no royalties, no contract; we simply do not place a new show where an existing subscriber already runs one. It is not a "subscribe and go" app, either. The software is professional, and new hosts are onboarded through a call and training, not a checkout link. And nobody here will tell you what you are going to make. What a host earns depends on the host, the venues and the market, and anyone who quotes you a number before they know those three things is guessing.
Success leaves clues. These are the clues, in order.