Photo via Trivia Maker (via YouTube )
Stephen Walsh usually works in bars in Baltimore. But when his income evaporated in the pandemic, he fell back on an old skill: Quizzing drunk people on “Friends” references.
On March 17, he launched a Zoom trivia night he nicknamed Walsh Trivia. For the last 40+ days, he’s spent all of his free time workshopping questions for strangers across the world.
His trivia schedule includes:
- One event at 8am ET (for people in Asia).
- Another at 1pm ET (for virtually everyone else).
- Sometimes a 3rd that he tacks on for the Alaskans in the audience.
Some of his games are huge: As many as 300 people join at a time, including from his concentrated fandoms in the US embassies in Pakistan and Nepal.
Walsh charges $3 for a team leader, then $2 per player after that. He told Business Insider, “I’ve never earned what I’m earning now doing any other job.”
What is… a sustainable side hustle?
Zoom trivia nights are a big deal right now. To keep money trickling in, restaurants, bars, and British pubs have put all their chips on the trend.
There are some professional trivia outlets there: The Syracuse Trivia Company has a buzzy game going, plus let’s not forget the one-time revival of HQ trivia in late March. But some of the most popular trivia nights are hosted by… randos. (No offense to Walsh.)
A sign of the amateurs’ rise: Companies like QuizRunners, which sell trivia questions to businesses, have actually seen a decline in subscriptions. That means most trivia hosts aren’t professionals paying for pre-made questions — they’re regular people coming up with their own.
Meet the new head honchos of trivia night
One Pennsylvania family — husband, wife, and 2 daughters — launched a trivia night from their living room using two iPads and a microphone.
While they have other day jobs — Jennifer McMenamin is an executive at a local bus service, and her husband Bill is an HR manager at a tech company — they’ve organized trivia fundraisers and other events for 10+ years.
Their 1st quarantine trivia night brought 200+ participants, and after that, the numbers kept climbing: 400, 600, 950 players.
The family runs on tips, and they’ve also set up a GoFundMe that raised $4k+ for a local food bank.
