Karaoke Forums

I run karaoke at a bar that wants to "liven" things up a little bit; they want to throw games in.  I think it's more to include the patrons that do not sing karaoke to get involved and have fun.  Now my problem with this is the games that I know just don't seem right for the crowd.  More than half of the crowd is 40-years-old or older that love country music.  And, trying to get a lot of people up on stage to do something silly is near impossible.  The other half of the crowd varies from week to week.  They usually fall in the 25-40 year-old category.  Don't really have many kids under 25, so it's pretty much a laid-back crowd.  My number of singers is a wide range as well.  One week I'll have 4, the next I could approach 20.

Also looking at prizes...  Besides free drinks, does anyone have a decent idea on what kind of "prizes" I could provide?

thanx for the thoughts!

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---wallyd

We've done karaoke bingo before.  I found a program that allows you to custom make the cards  to go along with certain themes of the bar, events, specials, waitstaff, etc...Make a call every 15 minutes or so.  First one with a bingo wins the prize for the night.  The bar we did it in put up $20 each night.  If the pot didn't get won by the end of the night, the pot would grow another $20 the next night (or week depending on how often it runs).  This was very popular with the college crowd along with the 30-50 year old as well.  The pot sometimes grew up to $200 (we capped it there).

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I guess I'd say that if the bar wants to "liven things up" with games then you ought to ask them what they want to provide as prizes.  There is no reason why you should have to come out of pocket for this.  

As usual, I guess my stance on games during karaoke is that they are fine as long as they don't interfere with the karaoke show.  As long as I've got singers waiting to sin, the karaoke should keep rolling.  However, one way to make things a little interesting is to have a theme for your show.  Something like songs about cars/trucks, songs about alcohol, songs with people's names in them, etc.  Other games you can play (depending on how many regulars are in your crowd and how well they know each other) are things like some kamikaze karaoke.  Another game I've used is to have any people who are interested in playing turn in a song slip with their name on it.  Then, all the singers who have their name in the hat will come and pull a song slip with someone else's name on it and then turn in a song for that person.  Again, only works if your singers know each other a little bit.  

Another game I've played is to have any singers who want to play turn in a song slip with their name on it, and a word that they think appears in a lot of karaoke songs.  I'll draw one singer at random, and then that person has the length of a song (gotta keep the karaoke rollin') to look in the book and find a song that they think their word appears in more than once.  After they have their song, they get up and sing the song and the bar gives them $1 on a bar tab (usually up to $20) each time the word appears on the screen.  It's fun and gets the rest of the people involved because I get the crowd to shout out and count every time the word appears.  

The beauty of this is that it keeps the karaoke rolling along and still gets the bar to have the "games" that tye want to liven things up.

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Spreading the karaoke gospel

Would you mind sharing where you found the program at? I am currently doing a search and i found a place http://www.dltk-cards.com/bingo/ ...is that it? or is there a downloadable proggie?
Thank you in advance

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Hey, thank you! I just called one of the members of the club i play at to see if that was something we could do, to bring it up at the meeting tonight. i know they're a little finicky when it comes to "gambling" although its okay to have poker machines  - even it if it was not $$ involved as prizes what could it hurt to have other prizes, even if at my own expense? and that was another question i raised like beer, or even something i baught from a novelty shop like blow up stuff.

No you can't charge anything, so it isn't gambling.  You CAN give prizes out for a game - which this is.

If the bar isn't going to pony up the prize money, don't bother.  A $10-$20 bill per night isn't going to make or break a bar, but it WILL make a winning "customer" happy.  People like to win stuff - especially cash.  HOWEVER, make sure that anyone that plays the game is spending money in the bar.  Nothing worse than someone winning a cash prize that isn't at least putting money back into the place!

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Hey thanks for responding. I would like to do something..but i imagine that 10-20$ a nite would rack up if they didn't pony up and i did. might not sound like much but, cut it off once, someone would moan i'm sure.

Again, if they didn't put up the prize money (or prizes), I wouldn't bother.  It shows to me that they aren't THAT interested in gaining any more clientelle & that's when I start looking for a new club.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

You can also get prizes from the liqour distributors.  T-shirts, cd holders, hats, etc. I've gotten lots of stuff from the distributors over the years (as a patron at a karaoke show) and when things start back up later this year I'll  likely talk with them about supplying prizes.  If they give you a dozen shirts you can easily use them over 8-10 weeks.  Small prizes go a long way.  We even have them put up snow boards and bikes.  Those are generally prizes that we shoot for over 4-6 months to draw people into a specific brand.  Buy a beer get a ticket.  We draw on x date until we have a winner.  I'd likely do a every person that sings a song goes in the drawing and you must be present to win.  That will draw people into participating in the karaoke.

We had one bar put up $100 and at midnight they drew a name out of all the singers for the night.  The winner got their hands tied together (in front of them) and then blindfolded.  They put $100 in $1 bills scattered around on the dance floor and you got 1 minute to pick up as many as you can.  The actual prize varies from week to week but figure about $20-$40.

 

 

We try to look the other way!

Susie  :shock:

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Karaoke with Full House Entertainment

[scroll]Just because I have a short attention span doesn't mean...... [/scroll]

one thing that we do at our show is play what we call "the money game"...we sell tickets for $1 a piece or 6 tickets for $5.  About 1 hour before the show is over, we draw one of the tickets and split the money with the winner...we get half & they get half...we both win that way

Except that what you do is considered gambling in most states and therefore illegal.  It is here in Alaska anyway.  You can't even sell tickets to a fund raising raffle for your church or the local boy scout troop without getting a permit!