Pub entertainment ideas for quiet nights: 11 that work, what each one costs, and how many pints it has to sell

The best pub entertainment ideas for a quiet night are the ones that bring in a crowd you wouldn't otherwise get, for less than that crowd spends at the bar. Bingo and a charity race night cost the pub almost nothing. A quiz you run yourself is about £13 a night, so six extra pints pays for it. A hosted karaoke night needs about 68. The rest of this guide is each idea with its published cost, the licence you need to check, and the number of pints it has to sell before it's made you a penny.

Every list of pub event ideas I've read is the same thirty things with a stock photo and no prices. Paint and sip, silent disco, murder mystery. Lovely. Nobody says what they cost or how busy the night has to be to be worth it, and on a quiet Tuesday that's the only question that matters. So this is the list I'd want: fewer ideas, all priced, all checked against the rules.

First, the number every idea has to beat

An event doesn't have to pay the rent. The rent's paid whether the door's open or not. It has to pay for itself: the act, the prize, the licence, the extra staff. I use about £2.45 of gross profit on a £5.34 pint, so every £10 the night costs needs about four extra pints sold that wouldn't have been sold anyway.

If you'd shut the pub altogether without the event, add the cost of opening. On my sums in the quiet nights guide, one bar shift from 6pm to 11pm is about £86 to £96 in 2026, which is about another 35 to 39 pints.

Pub entertainment ideas, costed

Idea	What it costs the pub	Extra pints to cover it*	Check before you start
Quiz you run yourself	About £12.90: £3.50 question pack plus a £25 bar tab that costs you about £9.40 in drink	6	Music round needs TheMusicLicence to cover it
Hosted quiz	£100 to £150 a night plus the prize	45 to 66	Same
Bingo (paper or phones)	Nothing on the game. Every penny staked goes back as prizes	0	No entry fee, £5 stake limit a game, adults only, cash before the game
Charity race night	Nothing on the racing. The kit (£29.99 to £49.99) comes out of the charity's reasonable costs	0	Pub profits from the bar only. Recorded races may need films on your licence
Hosted karaoke	About £150 for a host plus £14.64 live music licence event (up to 100 people)	68	Live music exemption 8am to 11pm, up to 500 people
DIY karaoke	KaraFun Pro about £37 a month with a venue licence, plus the live music licence	About 10 a night if you run it weekly	A personal account isn't licensed for venues
Film afternoon	From £89 + VAT for one unadvertised screening, room up to 50	37	Films must be on your premises licence. A Netflix login doesn't cover it
Open mic or a live act	£14.64 licence event plus whatever you pay the act	6, plus the act	Live music exemption, and tell PPL PRS
Darts, pool or dominoes league home night	Whatever food the league expects, if any	Depends on the sandwiches	Nothing, beyond having a board and a table that's in decent nick
A club or group that already exists	Nothing	0	Nothing
A quiz on the TVs every 20 minutes	StockTap TV, £34 a month for the whole pub	4 a week	Nothing extra. Full disclosure, it's mine

*At £2.45 gross profit a pint, rounded up to the next whole pint. Costs are published prices from the guides linked below, each with its own sources. My arithmetic, illustrative, not a real pub's figures.

The ones that cost almost nothing

Bingo. The law makes pub bingo free to run: no entry fee, no cut, every penny staked back as prizes, £5 a person a game, and under £2,000 a week. The house makes nothing on the game. That's the point. People sit for an hour and a half between games and buy drinks. The rules, the three traps and all 90 calls are in my bingo guide.

A charity race night. Same shape. The money from the racing has to go to the good cause after reasonable costs, so the pub's profit is the bar. But a charity brings its own crowd, people you'd never see on a Thursday in November, and they spend more freely knowing the racing money's going to the hospice. Three legal ways to run one in my race night guide.

A club that already exists. This is the one I never see on anyone's list. The running club that finishes at 8pm on a Wednesday. The book group meeting in someone's front room. The walking football lads. The knitting group. The quiz team from the pub that shut. They already exist, they already meet every week, and most of them would love a free room or a reserved corner on a set night. You don't pay an act. You don't buy a prize. You just ask. Put a card on the bar: "Run a club? Our Tuesdays are yours, free." One group of twelve having two drinks each is 24 pints you didn't have, every week, for nothing.

League nights. A darts, pool or dominoes league home fixture brings two teams on a fixed night, every other week, for the season. If the league expects sandwiches, cost them in. It's still about the most reliable midweek trade there is.

The ones that need doing properly

The quiz. Run it yourself and it costs about £13 and six pints. Hire a host at £100 and you need about 45 extra pints, which is twenty people who wouldn't otherwise have come having a couple each. Prizes as a bar tab, not cash: a £25 tab costs you about £9.40 in drink, a £25 cash prize costs £25. Rollover jackpots and Chase the Ace are where pubs trip over the gambling rules. The full sums are in does a pub quiz make money, and if you want free questions, I've written 50 general knowledge questions and a Christmas round.

Karaoke. Customers singing to a backing track counts as live music, so between 8am and 11pm, up to 500 people, it doesn't need to be on your premises licence. You still need TheMusicLicence and a venue-licensed karaoke service, not someone's personal account. A host at £150 needs a busy night. The karaoke guide has the full costs.

Films. Great idea for a Sunday afternoon in December. Two permissions though: films on your premises licence and a screening licence, from £89 + VAT a showing. Live TV is exempt, so the football and the Christmas Day film on the telly are fine. Can a pub show a film explains it.

Live music and open mic. Same live music exemption as karaoke, £14.64 on TheMusicLicence for an event up to 100 people, plus the act. Open mic is the cheap version: the performers are the audience, and they bring their mates. My music licence guide has the 2026 tariff.

Screens: the entertainment that runs while you pour

Most pubs have three or four tellies showing a muted news channel or a replay of a match nobody's watching. That's entertainment you've already paid for doing nothing. A rolling quiz, the football scores and your offers on those screens give people something to do between rounds without anyone having to host it.

I built StockTap TV to do exactly that in my own pub: a quiz on every TV every 20 minutes that people play on their own phones, phone bingo, the football updating itself, and your offers timed by day and hour. It's £34 a month for the whole pub with a 14-day free trial, which at £2.45 a pint is three or four pints a week. You can see what it does here. But the guide above works without it. Do the sums whichever way you go.

How to tell if it's working: the four-week test

A night that feels busy and a night that made money aren't the same thing. Here's how I'd judge any of these:

1. Pick one night and one event. Don't launch three things on three nights at once. You'll never know which worked.
2. Write down the baseline. The till for that night for the four weeks before you start.
3. Run it for four weeks. Week one is always quiet while word gets round. Judge it on weeks three and four.
4. Do the sum. Average takings with the event, minus the baseline, take the VAT off, times your GP, minus what the event cost. Positive? Keep it. Negative after four weeks? Change the event, keep the night.

And keep the prizes on the till. A bar tab prize that isn't rung through as a comp looks exactly like missing stock at the next stocktake, and then you're chasing a loss that was really the quiz.

Things I'd avoid

• Anything that charges an entry fee for bingo. That's a participation fee, and it takes the game out of the free exemption. Includes the "bingo and a curry for a tenner" ticket.
• Two events on the same quiet night. You don't double the crowd. You split it.
• Booking an expensive act for the quietest night. Build the night with a cheap weekly fixture first. Save the £300 act for when there's a crowd to put in front of them.
• Judging it on one week. Habits take a month.

Common questions

What is the cheapest entertainment for a pub?

Bingo and a charity race night cost the pub almost nothing, because by law the stakes go back as prizes or to the good cause, and the pub makes its money at the bar. A quiz you run yourself costs about £13 a night with a £25 bar tab prize. Inviting an existing club or group to use the pub on a quiet night costs nothing at all.

What entertainment brings people into a pub midweek?

Anything that gives a group of people a reason to come on that specific night: a weekly quiz, bingo, a league fixture, a club meeting, a charity race night. One-off acts bring a one-off crowd. Weekly fixtures build a habit, which is what fills a Tuesday in February.

Do I need a licence for pub entertainment?

It depends what it is. Live music, including karaoke, is usually exempt from the premises licence between 8am and 11pm for up to 500 people in alcohol-licensed premises, but you still need TheMusicLicence for the songs. Films need films on your premises licence plus a screening licence. Bingo and race nights have Gambling Commission rules but no licence if run within them.

How do I know if a pub event is worth it?

Compare the night's till against the same night for the four weeks before, take off what the event cost, and divide by about £2.45 gross profit per pint. If the extra takings don't cover the cost after four weeks, change the event, not the night.