A pub quiz you run yourself costs about £13 a night: a £3.50 question pack and a £25 bar tab prize, which only costs you about £9.40 in drink. At about £2.23 of gross profit on a standard lager, that's six extra pints to pay for it. Hire a quiz host at £100 a night and you need about 50 extra pints, about 20 people having two and a half drinks each who wouldn't otherwise have come in. The entry fee helps, but it isn't profit, and on a quiet night the quiz only works if it brings people through the door who'd have stayed at home.
Ask in any licensee group what fills a quiet Tuesday and someone says a quiz within a minute. Nobody ever says what it costs or how many people it needs. Everything that ranks for "how to run a pub quiz" is about picking rounds. So here are the sums, priced from published quiz suppliers, plus the rules that trip pubs up and the way I'd tell whether a quiz is actually earning its keep.
What a quiz night costs you
| What | Published price | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly 50-question pack with picture round, download | £3.50 a week | Pub Quiz Ready |
| Printed weekly quiz posted to the pub, 15 answer sheets | £10 a week plus VAT | Redtooth, The Big Weekly Quiz |
| Hosted pen-and-paper quiz, 90 to 120 minutes | £100 a night | VFE Quiz Nights, Glasgow |
| Hosted quiz night | £150 a night (£100 on a 4-week trial) | Leigh Milne, Scotland |
Those are a handful of suppliers, not the whole market, and hosts vary a lot by area. The point is the order of magnitude: questions cost a few pounds, a person to read them costs about a hundred.
The prize costs you less than its face value
A £25 bar tab isn't £25 out of your pocket. Take the VAT off and it's £20.83 of sales, and at a 55% wet GP the drink behind that costs you about £9.40. So a bar tab prize costs you roughly 38p in the pound. A £25 cash prize costs £25.
That's the reason most pubs give a bar tab, and it's a good one. Two things to get right. Ring the tab through the till as a comp or a promotion when it's used, or it'll turn up in your next stocktake as missing stock and you'll be chasing a variance that's really a quiz prize. That's the whole subject of comps and freebies as stock loss. And ask your accountant how they want it treated for VAT. HMRC's guidance doesn't spell out bar tab prizes, and I'm not going to guess.
The break-even
The quiz doesn't have to pay for opening the pub. If you're open anyway, the staff and the lights are already paid for. It only has to pay for itself. That's what this table shows, using about £2.23 of gross profit on an average £4.89 standard lager at 55% GP.
| Set-up | Cost per night | Extra pints to break even |
|---|---|---|
| You host, £3.50 pack, £25 bar tab prize | About £13 | 6 |
| You host, £10 printed quiz, £25 bar tab and a £10 bar tab for second | About £23 | 11 |
| £100 hired host, £25 bar tab prize | About £109 | 50 |
| £150 hired host, £25 bar tab prize | About £159 | 72 |
My arithmetic, rounded up to whole pints, with supplier prices ex VAT on the basis that a VAT-registered pub claims the VAT back. Your own GP and prices move every row, so redo it with your numbers.
Run it yourself and almost any quiz pays. Six pints is two teams of three having one more than they would have. Hire a host and it's a different business: you need about 20 extra people in, all buying, every week, before you've made a penny. That can work in a busy town pub. On a properly quiet night in a local, I'd want to see the crowd build with me reading the questions before I paid anyone £100 to do it.
If the night's so quiet you're not sure it's worth opening at all, the quiz has a second job. In should you shut on a quiet Monday I worked out that one bar shift costs about £86 to £96 in 2026, roughly 39 to 43 pints. A night doing 25 pints loses money. If a DIY quiz takes it to 50, the quiz hasn't just paid for itself, it's made the night worth opening.
The entry fee isn't profit
£1 or £2 a head is what most pub listings show. HMRC's guidance treats competition entry fees, other than for sport, as standard-rated for VAT, so £1 at the bar is about 83p to you. Thirty people at £1 is £25 after VAT. Check how your accountant wants it rung through.
What I'd do with it: put it back as the prize. A cash prize made up of the entry money is easy to explain, feels fair, and keeps the bar tab for second place. Just remember the VAT comes out of the entry money before it goes in the pot, so if you promise "all the entry money goes to the winners", that's a promise to pay the VAT yourself.
The jackpot rule that catches pubs out
A quiz is legal to charge for because it's a prize competition, not gambling. The Gambling Commission's test is that the result depends on skill, judgement or knowledge, and that the skill involved is enough to put a real number of people off entering, or stop a real number of entrants winning. Its own page says multiple choice, or questions that give you a second go, rarely meet that.
Where pubs go wrong is the bolt-on jackpot. A rollover won by drawing a card, picking an envelope or the bonus ball isn't skill, it's chance, and a paid-for chance game in a pub is a lottery or gaming. The Commission told councils in 2019 that rollover versions of Chase the Ace and bonus ball were unlawful. A customer lottery can't have a prize over £50 or roll over at all. If you want a jackpot, make it a skill question: one hard question, or a nearest-the-number tie-breaker, and roll that over. The full limits for poker, bingo and raffles are in the games night rules guide.
The music round needs the licence
PPL PRS says you'll usually need TheMusicLicence for music segments in a quiz. PRS's pub tariff lists a music quiz as its own session type, charged per session by room capacity, at the same rate as karaoke and discos: £14.21 a session for a room holding up to 100 people on the tariff that took effect in October 2025. That's PRS's side. The quote you actually get from TheMusicLicence combines it with PPL, so tell them you're doing a music round. What the licence costs overall is in the music licence guide.
The format that makes the bar money
This is my view, not a study. The money in a quiz is the breaks. A quiz that runs 8.30 to 10.30 with no gap is two hours of people sitting on one drink concentrating. I'd do:
- A proper half-time. Ten minutes, announced, with the answers to the picture round read out after it so nobody leaves early.
- Teams of up to six. Big enough that people bring friends, small enough that one table of ten doesn't win every week and kill it.
- Something to eat at the break. A cheap sharing plate on quiz night only. Price it properly. A bowl of chips at a 70% food GP does more for the night than a free one.
- Same night, every week, for at least eight weeks. Quizzes build slowly. Judging it on week two tells you nothing.
- The answer sheets back with the scores on. People come back to beat the team that beat them.
How to tell if it's working: count the keg, not the heads
A room full of quizzers feels like a good night. It might not be. Thirty people on tap water and one lime and soda each is a full room and a loss.
Here's the check I'd do, and I haven't seen anyone else suggest it. Spot count your best-selling lager and your most popular spirit at opening and at close on quiz night, and do the same on the same night a few weeks before you started, or on a week you skip. Pints in an 11-gallon keg are in how many pints in a keg. The difference between the two nights, times your gross profit per pint, is what the quiz is actually worth. If it's less than the cost line in the table above, the quiz is a nice community night that's costing you money, and you can decide with your eyes open whether that's worth it.
It also catches the other problem. If the till says the quiz night was busy but the keg says it wasn't that busy, you've got a different conversation to have, and line checks are where I'd start.
How common quizzes are
The last proper counts I can find are old. The Publican's 2008 market report said 42% of pubs ran a quiz night, and the Morning Advertiser estimated about 22,000 weekly quizzes in 2010, about half the pubs in the country. Greene King said in 2025 that its research showed 76% of customers are more likely to visit a pub for an event like a quiz. Nobody I can find has published what a quiz adds to a pub's takings with numbers you could check, which is exactly why the keg count is worth doing yourself.
Common questions
Does a pub quiz make money?
Usually, if you host it yourself. A £3.50 question pack and a £25 bar tab prize cost about £13 a night, about six extra pints at £2.23 gross profit each. With a hired host at about £100 a night it needs nearly 50 extra pints before it makes anything.
Can a pub charge an entry fee for a quiz?
Yes. A genuine knowledge quiz is a prize competition, not gambling, under the Gambling Act 2005, so you can charge entry and offer a prize. HMRC treats competition entry fees other than for sport as standard-rated, so VAT is due on them.
Is a quiz rollover jackpot legal in a pub?
Only if it's won by skill. A jackpot won by drawing a card or a number is chance, which makes it a lottery or gaming. The Gambling Commission has said rollover versions of games like Chase the Ace and bonus ball are unlawful, and customer lotteries can't roll over or pay prizes over £50.
Do I need a music licence for a pub quiz music round?
Usually, yes. PPL PRS says music segments in a quiz normally need TheMusicLicence, and PRS's pub tariff charges music quizzes as a separate session by room capacity, £14.21 for a room holding up to 100 on the October 2025 tariff.
How much does a pub quiz host cost?
Published prices we found start around £100 a night for a hosted pen-and-paper quiz, with some hosts at £150. A ready-made question pack to run it yourself costs from about £3.50 a week.
Sources
- £3.50 a week, 50 questions with picture round: Pub Quiz Ready, checked 22 October 2026.
- The Big Weekly Quiz, £10.00, prices plus VAT, 15 answer sheets: Redtooth, checked 22 October 2026.
- Traditional quiz £100: VFE Quiz Nights pricing. £150 per quiz night, £100 on a 4-week trial: Leigh Milne. Both checked 22 October 2026.
- Prize competition test, multiple choice rarely meets it: Gambling Commission, Free draws and prize competitions. Rollover Chase the Ace and bonus ball unlawful: LA bulletin, April 2019. Customer lottery £50 prize cap, no rollovers: Types of lottery that do not require a registration.
- Competition entry fees other than sport standard-rated: HMRC, VAT Notice 701/5 and VAT Sport manual VSPORT4000. 701/5 is written for clubs, so check with your accountant.
- Music segments in quizzes usually need a licence: PPL PRS, Pubs and bars. Music quizzes £14.21 per session for the first 100 capacity, standard rate, from 1 October 2025: PRS for Music, Tariff P (2025.10) (PDF).
- 42% of pubs ran quiz nights (Publican 2008 Market Report): Morning Advertiser, How to be a quiz master, 12 August 2008. About 22,000 weekly quizzes: Morning Advertiser, Question time: pub quizzes, 5 March 2010. Greene King 76%: Morning Advertiser, Pubs use events to attract customers, 17 November 2025.
- £4.89 standard lager, 55% GP, about £2.23 gross profit, and the £86 to £96 shift cost: my quiet nights guide, which has its own sources. The prize cost, break-even table and entry fee sums are my own arithmetic.