The creators of Periscope founded HQTrivia in the United States, an application that proposed a question and answer game in which you can only participate once a day, live, at a specific time, and with tens of thousands of other people. Additionally, the winner or winners could be awarded real money jackpots. The formula worked and there are now several businesses contest apps who intend to capitalize on that success in Spain. The best-known style app in our country is Q12, available at Play Store; but now it is also made known Quizzers, with a very similar mechanic of contests to win money.
The dynamic is very simple: every afternoon, at a certain time, hundreds, in the case of some applications even tens of thousands of users connect at the same time to watch a live broadcast of a TV contest on mobile. The caveat here is that the participants are themselves. Whoever manages to overcome all the questions will choose to share the jackpot of these apps with a money prize (we refer to cash) that there is that night.
Q12, the Spanish success
This is how HQ Trivia was born and the same format was imported by Spanish companies and start-ups such as Q12, which for months has brought together a growing community. In recent weeks, each night they gather more than 100,000 people, and although they have noticed a downturn with Christmas they managed to gather to more than 200,000 in the Christmas Eve special they did on December 24th.
Q12 has a pot of 500 euros every night that on Sundays becomes 1,000. When there is no winner on one night, the jackpot rolls over the next day. Thus, if there are 500 euros and winners are only 21 people (and with the difficulty of the questions it is usual that the number is always low), each of these players will take 23.8 euros that they will receive in a few days by Paypal.
But Q12 is the first, although not the only one. Q12 has now new competitors, two more contest apps.
Quizers and QuizVideo, the new quiz apps in contention
QuizVideo It does not yet have an app for Android but it brings together hundreds of people every day at 9:30 p.m. on its website. It is circumstantial that none of the apps want to step on the schedule: Q12 is at 10 p.m., while QuizVideo is at 9.30 p.m. and Quizers, the newcomer, at 20.00. It goes without saying that the market is young and there is room for everyone.
While in Q12 the live presenters broadcast from Madrid and are Juanjo de la Iglesia (ex Whoever that fails) and the ‘showman’ Toni Cano; In QuizVideo the presenters are Miguel Campos Galán (comedian from The resistance) and Saray Esteso (Dial string). The presenters of Quizers are two young people, Katia and Rodrigo.
Quizers is presented as a start up that seeks to emulate the success of HQ Trivia (remember that this American app has managed to keep two million people playing live) and therefore they ensure that their servers could maintain up to a million. However, for now up to 2,000 people are participating simultaneously.
Quizers questions are significantly simpler than those of Q12, although its current jackpot is also much smaller (80 euros compared to the 500 per day offered by Q12).
The differences between these contest apps
While Q12 raises the base game as a series of twelve questions, each with three possible answers, it is true that it maintains the possibility of having extra lives that could keep you in the game in the event of failing one of the questions. These extra lives are achieved by inviting friends to the app.
In QuizVideo and Quizers there are more ingame mechanics. In Quizers, for example, there is an ingame currency that can be obtained when you participate in the game. Once it has been removed no longer eligible for the cash prize, but answering correct answers (in what they call “training mode”) will give you this benefit.
With this in-game currency, the “quoins”, the players can request jokers and extra lives. The first ones give you clues as to which is the correct answer (in the style of the 50% in the 50 × 15 Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Classic). The extra lives have the same functionality as the Q12.
Quiz shows, a rising market
The possibilities of this type of live contests through mobile terminals are wide, and although where it has been lavished the most for now is in the North American market, the arrival in a matter of months of up to three competitors (and those that remain) to Spain it is a sign that there is business.
Only time will determine how much, if it is a fad or how it is distributed, but the potential is high. More, if you think about the probability that a conventional television station will pay attention to these formulas.
