About Trivia Mafia

Trivia Mafia began in 2007 as a weekly Sunday trivia night in Northeast Minneapolis, then called "Chuck & Sean's Trivia." It started small, but quickly grew, and was soon dubbed "the best bar trivia in Minneapolis." By 2009, they were getting asked to run games at enough other businesses that they got serious and created Trivia Mafia, LLC. 

In 2015, Trivia Mafia partnered with the people at 331 Club to create the Drinking Spelling Bee, which ran under our auspices until 2020. In 2021, we sold the rights to that game to the hosts, so they could continue the magic. 

During the 2010s, we invented a few holidays so we could play more games - Buxtahooda, which was like lawn games on steroids (with very little trivia) and Laborial Day, a taproom crawl with trivia at four spots, that happened sometime between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Participants would buy a wristband or tickets for a pint at each stop, and had to wear white and black clothing.

In 2014, we partnered with Ellie B. to take on the operations for Blingo! - a blinged-out Bingo game that specialized in hip-hop playlists and golden chalice prizes. 

In 2018, we first hit 100 regular trivia events in a week. We also introduced theme trivia events for the first time after testing the waters with "The Big Lebowski," "Gilmore Girls," and the "Game of Thrones" Geography Bee.

In 2019, we introduced QuizBang!! as a sister brand, creating a format with two 45-minute games that contained all general-knowledge questions. When we relaunched it in 2021, it evolved to the lean DIY format it has today, allowing customers to download just questions and marketing templates and do the rest on their own for a more affordable price. 

In 2020, just as we hit 200 customers, we had to stop everything. (There was a pandemic, you may recall.) We pivoted to online games, developing proficiency in Zoom and Twitch: the former, so we could make some money on Private Events, and the latter, so we could continue to bring joy into the lives of our loyal players. We also created a Patreon so that our company wouldn't crater; that support continues today!

In 2021, we returned to running live, in-person events, and introduced our digital answer site, AKA "the app." We changed the way we offer theme trivia so that customer locations could pick any day in a given month for a Featured theme, or a Rerun of a previously featured theme trivia. 

In 2024, we launched Initials Game Live in partnership with Cory Cove, who had created The Initials Game as a weekly segment on the KFAN Morning Trip radio show. He had also created a tabletop game, but was excited to bring The Initials Game into bars and taprooms as a way to combine his puzzle game with our recurring event savvy. We developed a special game app for this format as well, incorporating the same sounds used on the radio show, but all content is created fresh by the Trivia Mafia Editorial staff. 

As of 2025, we operate in seven states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, New Mexico, and California), have 20 Admin staff and nearly 200 Host staff. We run one big event, the Tournament of Champions, every November, and look forward to continuing to find new and fun ways to promote knowledge and facts and hanging out with people you like. 

Good trivia isn't trivial.