How to organise a sports quiz

Why run a sports quiz?

A sports quiz can provide an ideal environment for forming and strengthening friendships within the local community, or for a more openly evangelistic event where the purpose is to present the gospel in a way that encourages non-Christians to challenge their own understanding. Either way it’s great to identify your target audience and set out clear objectives for the event.

The Programme

You can organise your quiz night programme to suit the people you are aiming to reach. Most people are already familiar with the concept of a sports quiz, so stick to the quiz as the main focus of the evening and involve everyone with questions that appeal to all ages. In addition, you may want to add to the quiz – perhaps a game show with ‘celebrity’ panels of guests, a drama and possibly a light supper or refreshments.

The Practicalities

First decide on who you aim to attract. A sports quiz can be fun for anyone who loves sport, but it’s important to consider your target audience. If your focus is more on local families and community, you need to consider slightly different questions to suit a range of ages, with some just for the kids. Once you have decided on the audience, you will need to consider the following:

The date – as with all events, if you plan to invite a speaker, contact them first to find out a suitable date, then provisionally book the venue.
A team of helpers – including a good Question Master and someone such as your church leader to welcome people and MC the event. Additional help will be required if you’re catering for the event at your church or venue.
Have a clear structure outlined before you publicise the event. If a presentation of the gospel (like a talk or testimony) will form part of the evening then make sure this is clear on the invite so that guests aren’t ambushed by something they aren’t expecting.

AN A-Z FOR ORGANISING A QUIZ

Advertising

The best way to publicise the Sports Quiz and to ensure that the quiz attracts sportspeople is for Christian sportspeople to invite their teammates. Beyond this, posters, a notice in the church’s notice sheet and advertising on Social Media may also help to get the word out. All these are available in the Sports Quiz folder of the Christians in Sports Mission Pack.

Catering

Experience tells us that the Sports Quiz works best when it’s accompanied by a meal. We find that eating food together provides a great environment for conversations, and we would recommend providing some snacks or nibbles on the tables as well as a hot main meal, dessert and tea and coffee. The format of the quiz allows for a degree of flexibility that means that it can be planned around catering for guests. If providing a full meal to accompany the quiz isn’t possible, we would at least recommend putting some snacks or nibbles on the tables.

Costs

Cost ideally shouldn’t stop guests from attending the Sports Quiz, so it is recommended that the quiz is free of charge for guests. However, if costs are incurred as a result of venue hire or catering, you will need to ensure that these are covered, but do try to make sure that cost doesn’t prohibit guests from attending. Maybe have a donation bowl next to the door for guests to contribute if they can. Christians in Sport provide the Sports Quiz package free of charge, however, as a charity funded solely by donations, any gifts you would like to make as a result of the provision of the quiz are gratefully appreciated.

Decorating

Dressing the tables can add a nice touch if you feel it is suitable to do so. If the venue is a church, it can be good to decorate it with sports kit if you feel it appropriate.

Drinks

If the venue you are using has a bar, it can be great to make use of it. However, if there isn’t a bar at your venue, we would recommend that you think about whether you want to provide drinks or whether you want to ask guests to bring their own. Asking guests to bring their own drinks can be a good way to keep the costs down and it also leaves the choice of whether to bring alcohol down to them – unless you specify otherwise.

Equipment

Review the equipment list to see all you need to run your event.

Format of the Evening

The quiz lasts around 2 hours in total. It is made up of 6 rounds and is split up in the following way:

Rounds 1-3 Questions
Rounds 1-3 Answers
Film or Talk Break
Rounds 4-6 Questions
Rounds 4-6 Answers.We also have a bonus icebreaker round, which you can consider using to help created a good atmosphere at the start and ensure there are no awkward silences on the tables. For more information, see the icebreaker folder. The hosts will coordinate the marking of answer sheets and announcing the winners (see the ‘Top Tips on Being a Sports Quiz Host’ sheet in the Sports Mission Pack).

Music and Licences

The quiz relies on music to generate a good atmosphere. For copyright reasons, there is no music attached to the Sports Quiz other than the 10-second clips for round four, however, we would recommend playing a selection of sports themes and anthems to accompany the quiz itself. Albums of sports themes and anthems can be purchased and played via iTunes or an mp3 player. The venue you have chosen is required to have a PRS licence to play such music – any church, bar, pub or sports club will ordinarily have this licence, but you will need to confirm this. You can also search for Christians in Sport on Spotify and find their playlist for a quiz.

Prizes

We would recommend providing a box of chocolates (or similar) for the winning team. We would recommend doing this as it ensures that a fun atmosphere is created without the intensity of chasing a significant prize. We would also advise against giving prizes that can’t easily be split amongst team members.

Table Hosts

The Sports Quiz is designed for sportspeople to invite their sports friends to. Therefore, it is recommended that each Christian sportsperson acts as a ‘table host’ and fills the table with their sports friends. As the event organiser, it is important to identify table hosts early to ensure that they invite their friends in good time. The event organiser should also ensure that the table hosts know the purpose and the format of the evening so that their guests clearly understand what they are being invited to, for example, making sure that guests know that there will be a gospel talk. This will mean that, as the event organiser, you should only have to liaise with your table hosts to enable the smooth running of the quiz.

Table Sizes

Due to the nature of the quiz, we recommend that there should be between 4 and 8 people per table. We recommend a maximum of 8 people as any more than this can lead to not everyone being included in the answering of questions. Please also note that it is not necessary for all tables to have the same number of people on them.

Talk and Film

A series of short evangelistic films can be downloaded from the Christians in Sport website for use as part of your event. If you decide to use these, you will need to input the film into the quiz PowerPoint. Follow these five simple steps to get this up and running:

In Powerpoint – insert a new slide between slide 80 and slide 82, by right-clicking between them on the slide list, and then clicking ‘New Slide’.
Cover the whole slide with a black rectangle using the drawing tools
Go to ‘Insert’ – ‘Movie’ – ‘Movie from file’ and find the film you want to use.
The movie should now appear on that slide
Go to ‘Slideshow’ – ‘Play from current slide’ to test it works.

Venue

It’s important to pick a venue in which the guests will feel comfortable. Typical venues used for the Sports Quiz are sports clubs, function rooms, pubs or church buildings. The most important things to think about when deciding whether a venue is suitable or not are that it allows for a relaxed atmosphere and that there is appropriate space – the venue shouldn’t be too big or too small.

Follow-up and Resources

Have response cards and pens available on the tables for guests to make a discreet response (if they wish). Make sure your speaker knows about the cards. Ensure you have a follow-up strategy for after the event. Courses such as Christianity Explored can be great follow-up events to encourage guests to find out more about the good news of Jesus. Similarly, encouraging your congregation to intentionally follow up with their guests with an invite to church, or to meet up to share their faith over coffee, is a good idea.

For more detailed resources on running a sports quiz head to the Christians in Sport website to download the Sports Mission Pack:

On it you will find a ready-made full multimedia quiz with six rounds (and an optional icebreaker) and everything you need to run it, as well as pre-made publicity designs that are easy to adapt, and helpful pointers on how and when to share the gospel message at your event.

A London church’s experience – written by Christine Armstrong

As part of the Life ‘22 mission, All Souls Langham Place worked with Christians in Sport (CiS) to put on their Sports Quiz.

How we did it

We held it in the main church on a Monday night in March, and a good crowd of 180 people gathered, despite Covid being on the rise at the time.

Tickets: £5 per person which went towards prizes and food
Prizes: First prize was an attractive hour’s play for the whole team at a local “Sixes” (a social cricket venue with cricket nets, food and a bar). Our second prize was a box of chocolates, and there was a wooden spoon for the team who came last. A fancy first prize is not needed, nor is a ticket cost, but we felt that booking and paying helped people commit to coming along. The prize also gave people extra motivation on the night to get into the quiz.
Food: A hotdog and a beer or wine upon arrival were also included which made a big difference in creating a welcoming and fun atmosphere. (Due to uncertainty about whether ticket sales would cover the cost of the food and drinks, it was not initially publicised that the ticket included this, so people were pleasantly surprised).
The quiz: CiS were a tremendous help and their resources really do make it very easy for any church to put on a fun and engaging sports quiz. We would highly recommend using their resources. The content of the CiS quiz itself was great, not too hard nor too easy. Cleverly, some questions involved observing details in sports clips and could have been answered by anyone even if they didn’t know much about the sport. Some older children even came along and were able to join in.

Gathering the teams

Members of our church family who play sports were encouraged to bring friends to fill a table. A lot of personal effort from church staff went into getting these sporty Christians on board. We were pleased that a good number of non-Christian sports friends came and really enjoyed the evening. One church family member said his teammates enjoyed it so much that, “next time, it won’t just be me inviting my rugby friends, it will be five of us inviting the team”.

Points to think about

We’d recommend getting sports people to try filling their own tables, but don’t discourage people from coming along solo or in twos or threes to join a table on the night.
Take some good photos of the event and share them afterwards so that people can see what they missed out on and be keener to join in next time!
Why not tell other churches in the area as well but stress that the main purpose is evangelistic so that they know they’re to bring not-yet-Christians.

The gospel message

Rico Tice, himself a lover of rugby, did a gospel talk entitled “A whole new ball game”, which was included in the publicity so people knew what they were coming to. When it comes to the gospel talk, be mindful that a shift in the atmosphere needs to take place from the excitement of competing in the quiz to then encouraging quiet for the talk.

More points to remember

If possible limit the talk to 5-7 minutes so as not to lose too much of the quiz’s momentum.
Striking the right accessible, relaxed and friendly tone in the talk is important. The whole event should show that Christians as a whole are not as alien as they might seem and that they too can love sport, whilst loving Jesus more; the Creator and giver of life’s good things.
Another potentially engaging option is to interview a sports person in the church family who could talk about their sport, how they became a Christian and what difference Jesus makes to them and their attitude to sport.

Follow-up

The benefit of holding the event in the church building is that it helps familiarise people with the church and may mean that they will be more open to coming back for something else.

Some pointers in addition to CiS’s suggestions above

Consider having something people can take away with them to find out more about Christianity, such as a little booklet or book including a sports person’s testimony.
Encourage your church family to follow-up personally with their guests and offer to take steps with them to explore Christianity, perhaps by accompanying them to a course or looking at a gospel one-to-one. Resources like Uncover or The Word One to One could help with this.

An endorsement from Edinburgh (excerpt first appeared in Evangelicals Now)

Christians in Sport partnered with churches in Edinburgh for ‘A Passion for Life’. It proved to be a great night with just under 100 people attending and around 60 of them being friends of Christian sportspeople in the city. Dave Hampton, a Christians in Sport Scottish staff worker, shared the gospel at half-time, encouraging people to consider how Jesus came to serve them through his death and resurrection.

Jen, a Christian tennis player said this about her experience of the event “The sports quiz was such an easy thing to invite people to, the atmosphere was spot on, relaxed, fun and competitive. My teammates know I’m a Christian but it was a great way to move the conversation on to a deeper level and articulate my Christian faith to them. Now I know they have heard about Jesus and what I believe, I’m praying ultimately they come to know Him too.”

How To’s and Principles

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