top of page

A london pub quiz

The Project

A Digital Market in London 
Given the chance to explore a digital market in London, I chose to look at how pub quizzes in London can be looked at as a market and in terms of the digital. A market can be described as an arena of options in which vendors attempt to sell their goods in competition with others. Considering this, the London pub quiz market is teeming. The largely weekday practice of gathering friends together to compete for a grand prize of usually around 50 pounds or 10ish pounds each can be found all around the city. There is variety and creativity involved, as well as staleness and frustration, there are hits and misses and an infinite amount of variables that all contribute to the pub quiz market.
​
The Digital emerges in multiple areas. Many pubs require booking in advance due to their popularity. This is often done through either their own website or through booking-specific websites. Present in most pub quizzes is the banning of smartphones. They are seen as a a conduit for cheating. As with any market, buyers move within the marketplace for different reasons. Some are part of competitive teams that show up every week to the same quiz with a win or die mentality, some come out of general curiosity, many follow friends, and occasionally some are ambushed with a quiz simply because of time and place. The vendors in the market are operating within the market function of providing a service or product for profit or some sort. Within the past half century many pubs have been faced with the reality of lessened alcohol consumption and rising food and beverage prices. Consequentially many pubs have closed; in 2015 the rate of closure was 27 pubs per week. Many pubs have therefore faced the need to create business throughout the week, and not just popular Thursday evening through to Sunday. Pub quizzes have proved to bring people out on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when pubs might otherwise be empty. Research involved perusing the internet, going to quizzes, and discussing quizzes with people of different interest levels in the quizzes themselves. Below are some findings and a fact or two. A note: as pub quizzes are usually full of stimuli, from here on out there will be few quiet colors or fonts.
Pubs

English pubs are seen as a staple of English society, having been around for quite some time. In hamlets, towns and cities across the country there are pubs. While in reality any property type will never truly be representative of a society, it is still interesting to look at how the idealism and romanticization of "the English pub" has formed. Tracing the origins of pubs in England is confusing and full of uncertainty. In medieval times all throughout England there were a variety of drinking establishments under the name of either inn, tavern, or alehouse, their differences relating to what they sold and what other services they provided. Pub were often named for the images painted on their signs, which were easily identifiable, like a King's head. After this it became common for pubs to be named for English war heroes, like the Duke of Wellington. Other common themes in pub names include colors, animals, and royalty. 

​

The most common pub names:

The Red Lion

The Red Lion

The crown

The royal oak

The Swan

The White hart

The plough

Findings

To many people, the enjoyment (which is the goal) of a pub quiz is heavily influenced by the atmosphere. This can be the atmosphere of the pub itself- is the volume right, is the music good, are there enough people, but not too many? The food and beverage available is also important, as most people will rely on it over the course of the evening.

 

  The atmosphere is often aided by the people you are in a team with. There has to be the right level of collaboration, in which no one is overly dominant. Anytime an answer is shot down only to turn out to be correct there will be chaos. Within the team, it is common for team members to develop identities based on the role they take up. This identity can be based upon a certain area of knowledge, like the "history person". Teams themselves acquire identities to other teams, like being the team with the good name, or the one that is taking this a bit too seriously. You can find yourself being the expert in something you never would have expected!

Atmosphere

The team name helps to create the team spirit and is a crucial part of the quiz. There are requirements though. It has to be funny, potentially punny, personal, and completely unique. This is hardly ever achieved. 

​

Another aspect that seems to be important is the quiz master. Who you have leading the quiz can affect the general tone. You can have subdued, eccentric, loud, charismatic. Uniqueness seems to be appreciated.

A part of the atmosphere is the mutual understanding of those involved as to the spoken and unspoken rules. The rule about no phone use is commonly announced at the beginning, but oftentimes there are moments of skepticism over how someone could have gotten that answer without the internet. There is also frequently neighbor scoring in which answer sheets are swapped and graded by neighboring teams. These swaps are expected to be honest, as well as lenient. Those who overly stringent and mark something as wrong for a simple misspelling are often seen as being unsporting.

There will be a music round it will probably be listening to two seconds of a song and trying to identify it

Many London pubs advertise online, and many appear on the website pubquizzers.com. There are 321 pubs listed (this means that there are many that aren't included. How this affect the statistics is unknown, but it would likely be significant. However, working with what is available we can find some interesting geogrpahic correlations regarding the finances of pub quizzes).

Visualizations

6% start between 6:00pm and 6:59pm

29% start between 7:00pm and 6:59pm

61% start between 8:00pm and 8:59pm

4% start between 9:00pm and 9:59pm

only 1 quiz starts at 10pm!

Quiz

Questions are varied, usually involving geography, history, tabloid news, sports, architecture, animals, etc.

Here are some sample questions provided by coworkers (20%), friends (20%) and my mom (60%)

Pub quizzes can operate as digital markets and they can also operate as neither particularly market like nor digitally inclined. Someone could walk down a street, pass a pub with a sign out front advertising a quiz, pop in, and partake. Or someone could search online, seek out a quiz whose description, location, and timing seem right, book online, and message friends to meet up. But even in situations where there seem to be fewer digital influences, even the banning of digital objects involves the digital. And even if you only walk past one pub before committing, you are still aware of other pubs and their quizzes, and still understand that you, the quiz, the pub, the market, and the digital are all working alongside each other.

bottom of page