Everyone's favourite pub activity has entered the online sphere on a mass scale. Workmates, housemates and mate-mates everywhere learned how to attend and even how to host an online pub quiz. One guy, Jay from Jay's Virtual Pub Quiz, went viral and hosted a quiz online for over 100,000 people!
If you're looking to host your own super cheap, even possibly free online pub quiz, we've got your guide right here! Turn your weekly pub quiz into a weekly online pub quiz!
Your Guide to Hosting an Online Pub Quiz
How to Host an Online Pub Quiz (4 Steps)
For the rest of this guide, we’ll refer to our online quiz software, AhaSlides. That’s because, well, we think it’s the best pub quiz app out there and it's free! Still, most of the tips in this guide will apply to any pub quiz, even if you use different software or no software at all.
Step 1: Select your quiz rounds and themes
The foundation of any successful online pub quiz lies in thoughtful round selection. Your rounds determine the quiz's pace, difficulty curve, and overall participant experience.
Understanding round variety
A well-structured quiz typically includes 4-6 rounds, each lasting 5-10 minutes. This structure maintains attention whilst allowing for natural breaks and discussion periods.
Classic round categories:
- General knowledge - Broad appeal, accessible to all participants
- Current events - Recent news, industry updates, or company milestones
- Specialised topics - Industry-specific knowledge, company culture, or training content
- Visual rounds - Image identification, logo recognition, or screenshot challenges
- Audio rounds - Music clips, sound effects, or spoken word challenges
Professional round ideas for corporate contexts
When hosting quizzes for professional audiences, consider rounds that align with your objectives:
For training sessions:
- Training content review rounds
- Industry terminology quizzes
- Best practices identification
- Scenario-based questions
For team building:
- Company history and culture
- Team member trivia (with permission)
- Department knowledge challenges
- Shared project memories
For events and conferences:
- Speaker presentation summaries
- Industry trend identification
- Networking icebreaker questions
- Event-specific content
Balancing difficulty levels
Effective quiz design includes a mix of difficulty levels:
- Easy questions (30%) - Build confidence and maintain engagement
- Medium questions (50%) - Challenge without overwhelming
- Difficult questions (20%) - Reward expertise and create memorable moments
Pro tip: Start with easier questions to build momentum, then gradually increase difficulty. This approach keeps participants engaged throughout rather than losing them early with overly challenging content.
Step 2: Prepare compelling questions
Preparing the list of questions is undoubtedly the toughest part of being a quizmaster. Here are some tips:
- Keep them simple: The best quiz questions tend to be simple ones. By simple, we don't mean easy; we mean questions that aren't too wordy and are phrased in an easy-to-understand manner. That way, you'll avoid confusion and make sure there's no disputing over the answers.
- Range them from easy to difficult: Having a mix of easy, medium and difficult questions is the formula for any perfect pub quiz. Placing them in order of difficulty is also a good idea to keep players engaged throughout. If you're not sure what's considered easy and difficult, try testing your questions beforehand on someone who won't be playing when it's quiz time.
Question type variety
Diversifying question formats keeps participants engaged and accommodates different learning styles:
Multiple choice questions:
- Four options (one correct, three plausible distractors)
- Avoid obviously wrong answers
- Balance option lengths
Type answer questions:
- Single correct answer
- Accept common variations (e.g., "UK" or "United Kingdom")
- Consider partial credit for close answers
Image-based questions:
- Clear, high-quality images
- Relevant to the question
- Accessible on mobile devices
Audio questions:
- High-quality audio clips
- Appropriate length (10-30 seconds)
- Clear playback instructions
Step 3: Create your interactive quiz presentation
The presentation layer transforms your questions into an engaging, professional experience. Modern interactive quiz software makes this process straightforward whilst providing powerful engagement features.
Why use interactive quiz software?
Interactive quiz platforms offer advantages that traditional methods cannot match:
Real-time engagement:
- Participants answer via smartphones
- Instant scoring and feedback
- Live leaderboards maintain competitive spirit
- Automatic answer collection eliminates manual marking
Professional presentation:
- Polished visual design
- Consistent formatting
- Multimedia integration (images, audio, video)
- Brand customisation options
Data and insights:
- Participation rates
- Answer distribution analytics
- Individual and team performance metrics
- Engagement patterns throughout the quiz
Accessibility:
- Works on any device with internet access
- No app downloads required for participants
- Supports remote, hybrid, and in-person formats
- Accommodates large audiences (hundreds to thousands)
Step 4: Choose your streaming and hosting platform
The video conferencing platform you select determines how participants interact, see your quiz, and communicate with each other.
Platform comparison for online pub quizzes
Zoom:
Pros:
- Familiar to most participants
- Screen sharing works seamlessly
- Breakout rooms for team discussions
- Chat function for questions and banter
- Recording capability for later review
Cons:
- Free plan limited to 40 minutes
- Requires Pro plan ($14.99/month) for longer sessions
- 100 participant limit on most plans
Best for: Small to medium groups (up to 100), professional events, training sessions
Microsoft Teams:
Pros:
- No time limits on meetings
- Up to 250 participants
- Integrated with Microsoft ecosystem
- Good for corporate environments
Cons:
- Can become unstable with large groups
- Interface less intuitive for casual users
- Requires Microsoft account
Best for: Corporate events, internal team activities, organisations using Microsoft 365
Google Meet:
Pros:
- Free tier available
- No time limits for paid accounts
- Up to 100 participants (free) or 250 (paid)
- Simple interface
Cons:
- Fewer features than Zoom
- Screen sharing can be less smooth
- Limited breakout room functionality
Best for: Educational settings, budget-conscious events, Google Workspace users
Professional streaming platforms:
For larger events or professional broadcasts:
- Facebook Live - Unlimited viewers, public or private streams
- YouTube Live - Professional streaming, unlimited audience
- Twitch - Gaming and entertainment focus, large audience capacity
Best for: Public events, large-scale quizzes, professional event production
4 Online Pub Quiz Success Stories
At AhaSlides, the only thing we love more than beer and trivia is when someone uses our platform to its maximum potential.
We've picked out 3 examples of companies that nailed their hosting duties in their digital pub quiz.
1. The BeerBods Arms
The overwhelming success of the weekly BeerBods Arms Pub Quiz is really something to marvel at. At the height of the quiz's popularity, hosts Matt and Joe were looking at a staggering 3,000+ participants per week!
Tip: Like BeerBods, you can host your own virtual beer tasting with a virtual pub quiz element. We've actually got some funny pub quizzes to get you prepared.
2. Airliners Live
Airliners Live is a classic example of taking a themed quiz online. They're a community of aviation enthusiasts based in Manchester, UK, who used AhaSlides along with the Facebook live streaming service to regularly attract 80+ players to their event, the Airliners Live BIG Virtual Pub Quiz.
3. Job Wherever
Giordano Moro and his team at Job Wherever decided to host their pub quiz nights online. Their very first AhaSlides-run event, the Quarantine Quiz, went viral (excuse the pun) and attracted over 1,000 players across Europe. They even raised a bunch of money for the World Health Organisation in the process!
4. Quizland
Quizland is a venture led by Peter Bodor, a professional quiz master who runs his pub quizzes with AhaSlides. We wrote a whole case study on how Peter moved his quizzes from the bars of Hungary to the online world, which gained him 4,000+ players in the process!
6 Question Types for an Online Pub Quiz
A top-quality pub quiz is one that's varied in its question type offerings. It may be tempting to just throw together 4 rounds of multiple choice, but hosting a pub quiz online means that you can do so much more than that.
Check out a few examples here:
1. Multiple choice quiz
The simplest of all the question types. Set out the question, 1 right answer and 3 wrong answers, then let your audience take care of the rest!
2. Image choice
Online image choice questions save a lot of paper! No printing necessary when quiz players can see all images on their phones.
3. Type Answer
1 right answer, infinite wrong answers. Type answer questions are much harder to answer than multiple choice ones.
4. Word Cloud
Word cloud slides are a little outside of the box, so they're a fantastic addition to any remote pub quiz. They work on a similar principle to the British game show, Pointless.
Essentially, you pose a category with many answers, like the one above, and your quizzers put forward the most obscure answer that they can think of.
Word cloud slides showcase the most popular answers centrally in large text, with the more obscure answers flanking in smaller text. Points go to correct answers that were mentioned the least!
6. Spinner Wheel
With the potential to host up to 1000 entries, the spinner wheel can be a fantastic addition to any pub quiz. It can be a great bonus round, but can also be the full format of your quiz if you're playing with a smaller group of people.
Like in the example above, you can assign different difficulty questions depending on the amount of money in a wheel segment. When the player spins and lands on a segment, they answer the question to win the amount of money specified.
Note 👉 A word cloud or spinner wheel aren't technically 'quiz' slides on AhaSlides, meaning that they don't tally points. It's best to use these types for a bonus round.
Ready to Host an Online Pub Quiz?
They're all fun and games, of course, but there's a serious and dire need for quizzes like these at present. We commend you for stepping up!
Click below to try AhaSlides for absolutely free. Check out the software with no barriers before you decide whether or not it's a good fit for your audience!
