Trivia and game show host hire in Australia: the complete guide

A hosted quiz night is one of the few event formats where the guests do the work. Nobody has to dance, nobody has to make conversation with a stranger, and within about fifteen minutes a room of people who barely know each other are arguing cheerfully about the capital of Slovenia. That is why trivia keeps turning up at staff Christmas parties, fundraisers and club nights where a band would be wasted.

The hosts listed here range from pub quiz regulars to full game show productions with buzzers and a set. The prices on this page are live from those acts, and the spread is wide because the two ends of the category are genuinely different jobs.

An MC keeps an event moving around other things that are happening: speeches, courses, a first dance. A trivia host is the event. They are running a format for two hours straight, holding attention with no band and no dance floor to fall back on, and the whole night lives or dies on their pace.

The skills overlap at the microphone and diverge everywhere else. A trivia host needs question writing, scoring, a sense of when a round is dragging, and the nerve to handle a table that disputes an answer. Plenty of people on this site do both jobs well, but they are separate products and they are booked for completely different nights.

At minimum: the questions, a sound system with a microphone, answer sheets and pens, and the scoring. Most hosts bring a screen or projector feed for picture and music rounds, which is usually what lifts a quiz above someone reading from a page. Some bring buzzers, team table numbers, a scoreboard display and small prizes.

The running time is typically a couple of hours across four to six rounds with a break, and the host normally turns up well ahead to set up and work out where the sound will actually reach. Ask what is included and what is yours to supply, because prizes and printing are the two things most often assumed by both sides.

The upper end of this category is not a quiz at all. It is a television format adapted for a function room: teams on stage, buzzers, lighting, physical challenges, a host working from a script with an assistant running the technical side. Corporate clients book these for conference dinners and team days because they produce big reactions and photos.

They cost more for obvious reasons. More equipment, more setup time, often two or three staff, and real production work in advance. If you want the high-energy version, say so early, because the venue needs to know about the staging and the power and you will want a room with a proper focal point rather than a long thin function space.

The single biggest improvement you can make is telling the host who is in the room. Ages, the industry, whether it is a work crowd or a mixed family group, and whether anyone will be offended by a sports round. A host with that brief can weight the questions so nobody spends two hours feeling stupid, which is the most common way a quiz night dies.

Custom rounds are worth asking about too. A round of questions about the company, the club, the couple or the guest of honour is usually the loudest part of the night, and most hosts will write one if you send them the material a week or two out.

Bad sound is the first. If the back tables cannot clearly hear the question, they stop playing, and once a table checks out it does not come back. A long room with a hard ceiling needs more than one speaker, and a host who asks about the room shape before quoting is telling you they know this.

Tables are the second. Teams need to sit facing each other and be able to confer quietly, which is impossible at a single long banquet table. And phones are the third, which is a rules question rather than a technical one. Decide in advance whether you are policing them or writing questions that a search engine cannot answer quickly, and let the host tell you which they prefer.