Quiz jackpot question

[Silver]

I am looking possibly at changing my weekly rollover jackpot. So if I explain what I do first and maybe some of you quiz masters maybe able to suggest something different.

1. People buy a raffle ticket for £1, with all proceeds going to the jackpot fund.

2. At the end of the main quiz one of the tickets is picked and the 'player' is chosen.

3. The player comes up to the front to me and I ask them to pick a ball out of a bag, balls numbered 1 to 75.

4. I have questions on all subjects, some seriously tough, some just downright hard! :p

5. If the player has picked ball 32 from the bag, they get asked question 32 from my list.

6. If they answer correctly they win the jackpot, incorrect answer and the jackpot rolls over.

7. The question asked is then changed for a new one for the following week.

One problem here is, when the 'pot goes I have to start again with no money in the kitty. I have toyed with getting the player to nominate a friend so if the player doesn't know the answer then they can confer for 25% of the jackpot. Then, if the two of them don't know they go back to their team, have a chat and answer for 10% of the pot. The idea here, is somebody has a chance of winning something but the bulk of the money stays in the kitty. :)

Although this method is not meant to favour anybody, the downside is I have to make the questions difficult so as to achieve an increasing kitty. So in a way it favours the, how shall I say, the more intelligent members of the crowd.

So what other rollover jackpot methods are about, the only other method I am aware of is the 'Play your cards right' one.

Any ideas folk?

[Shakermaker Promotions]

How's about something like this (I've mentioned it before as I used to do a weekly quiz and used this and it was very popular).

You have your jackpot ok. Let's say for example that it's £100.00 at the moment.
You get 4 tins, boxes or whatever you like.
You split the £100.00 between 3 of the boxes which means that one of the boxes is empty (obviously..D'oh!). Say box 1 has £60, box 2 has £30 and box 3 has £10. The winner of the quiz then gets to answer the jackpot question and pick one of the boxes (not allowed to touch them!!).

What this means is that the winner has a 1 in 4 chance of going away with nothing even though they have answered the jackpot question! This also means that the rest of the money can rollover and be split the following week.

I must admit...I never used this for a jackpot question. I never did a jackpot at all. I just did 1st, 2nd and 3rd with the boxes idea and on a number of occasions, the team that came 2nd or 3rd won more than the winners of the quiz and a few times, the winners picked the empty box so didn't win anything! I'm not sure how my idea would work with your jackpot thing but maybe you could do something along those lines? Just thought I would mention it.

[rob1963]

One problem here is, when the 'pot goes I have to start again with no money in the kitty. I have toyed with getting the player to nominate a friend so if the player doesn't know the answer then they can confer for 25% of the jackpot. Then, if the two of them don't know they go back to their team, have a chat and answer for 10% of the pot. The idea here, is somebody has a chance of winning something but the bulk of the money stays in the kitty. :)

Hi Silver,

I had similar problem with one of my own quiz nights a couple of years ago.

After the quiz was finished & I'd paid out the prizes, I sold raffle tickets for £1 each, then drew one out & that person got to play "Play your cards right" and had to turn over 8 cards correctly to win the jackpot. Like your quiz, each week when the jackpot wasn't won it rolled over.

As you mention, and as I soon discovered, once the jackpot is won, the next week you have nothing, so the jackpot will only consist of your ticket sales for that week.

The other problem is that when the jackpot is virtually nothing, people will be less interested in buying tickets..because the higher the jackpot, the more likely people are to buy tickets.

The way I got around this was simple. I can't remember the exact percentages, but I basically put about 75% of the money from ticket sales into the jackpot and the other 25% into a separate envelope to start off the NEXT jackpot.

That way, when I had a big jackpot of say £450 and it got won, the following week's new jackpot would still start with a decent amount, like £100 (plus the ticket sales for that week) rather than only about £10.

This idea worked well for me, and has the added bonus of being nice & simple.

[Silver]

I must say I like the concept of Gary's idea, maybe with some tweaking that could work, a combination of skill, answering a question and luck, what box you pick.

I've spoken to a few people about the 'play your cards right' method and they didn't seem to like it, as it was solely luck with no skill needed.

I'll carry on researching and update if I find anything worthwhile.

[rob1963]

I've spoken to a few people about the 'play your cards right' method and they didn't seem to like it, as it was solely luck with no skill needed.

I wasn't suggesting you do play your cards right.

I was just saying you could carry on as you are now, apart from putting a small percentage of your takings into a separate envelope to start off the NEXT jackpot. That way, when the current jackpot is won, you'll already have a decent amount in the envelope to start off the NEXT jackpot.