Interactive game show The Q will stream live trivia contests at this week’s WTA Volvo Car Open tournament in Charleston, S.C. The first trivia game was held Tuesday night at the Family Circle Tennis Center in Charleston, and daily shows will continue to stream until the tournament concludes on Sunday.
Games are open to fans both in the venue and from around the U.S. The Q was launched by Charleston-based video company Stream in November 2017 as a competitor to HQ Trivia. The app is available for download in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and India. Trivia shows typically contain 12 questions and last between 10-15 minutes.
“We have zero third parties involved in our live video stack and built the entire thing from the ground up with a focus around low latency and delivery at scale,” said Will Jamieson, CEO of The Q. “HQ Trivia uses a third party called Wowza. “[Other trivia apps] out there are dependent on third-party video technology companies, which is often why a lot of them will have technical glitches.”
Tennis reporter Nick McCarvel co-hosted Tuesday’s opening contest alongside World No. 18-ranked singles player Madison Keys, who is competing in the Volvo Car Open. The show was sponsored by SunTrust, which maintains a partnership with the tennis tournament.
The Q is aiming to leverage the trivia market by providing brands and publishers, both within and outside sports, with sponsorship opportunities. The Dallas Mavericks used The Q’s platform to host an in-stadium live trivia show as a pregame event for fans before the team’s final home game last April. Winning fans were awarded seat upgrades and team merchandise.
Media publishers such as WatchMojo and News UK have also collaborated with The Q to produce daily and weekly trivia shows. Music streaming platform Pandora partnered with the company to create a music-themed trivia show seen by 12,000 people, and offered a cash prize of $2,000 plus a year-long Pandora Premium subscription.
“[HQ Trivia] hit their peak at [about] two million concurrent viewers but it’s the same exact show every single day,” Jamieson said. “We may not have the most maximum peak concurrent for a general show, but we would be having hundreds of thousands of different types of shows and audiences participating in them. We want to empower tens of thousands of brands to leverage our toolset to engage with their audience.”
Caroline Wozniacki co-hosted last night’s show. Fellow tennis stars Sloane Stephens and Julia Goerges will be featured in Thursday and Friday’s shows, while former men’s champion Andy Roddick will appear on Sunday.
Jamieson, who co-founded the now defunct anonymous social media app Yik Yak before joining Stream, believes The Q’s future growth will be tied to integrating its gameshows into live broadcasts. The company did just that during a Columbus Crew v. Charleston Battery MLS-USL preseason soccer match this past February.
That match itself was broadcast live on The Q’s mobile app using the company’s proprietary streaming technology. Announcers could ask fans questions relevant to the match during stoppages on the field. Users would input their answers to the trivia questions and move onto the next question if they answered correctly for a chance to win a cash payout.
“Our MLS broadcast use case where we ran a simulcast of the game to The Q and there was questions asked throughout the event, we believe that has a lot of potential down the road,” Jamieson said. “What we built is an interactive video platform that could be used for trivia, gaming, etc., and we want to reach as many different verticals as possible.”