Cash for questions
Big money prizes lead to surge in popularity of online quiz shows
People all over China are racking their brains to recall what they learned in high school, as online live streaming apps woo users with stunning cash prizes in quiz shows.
Mobile apps are offering prizes of between 100,000 yuan ($15,500) and 5 million yuan for a live streaming quiz of 12 questions. Participants who give all the correct answers share the jackpot between them.
In a typical show, a host, often a household celebrity, asks questions and waits for participants to give their answers. Each online contestant has 10 seconds to answer, with each show lasting around 30 minutes.
The questions cover a wide range of topics such as traditional Chinese poetry, basic mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.
Race to the top
Live-streamed quiz shows came under the spotlight after Wang Sicong, online celebrity and son of Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin, announced a prize on a quiz app called Chongdingdahui, translated as “race to the top,” on January 3.
Other apps such as Huajiao and Xigua quickly followed suit.
To attract new users, the apps offer “revival cards” to newcomers and those who invite other people to join. A revival card enables a contestant who gives a wrong answer to get another chance to continue the quiz.
Shanghai-based Xiao Yi was invited by one of his former classmates to attend the quiz on the Huajiao app.
“We have formed a WeChat group composed of straight-A students from our former class to pool our wisdom for the answers during the show,” he said.
The app has attracted 300 million participants since January 5, and the number of users has surged by 20 percent, according to the company, which organizes several quizzes each day.
Li Jining, a 35-year-old media worker based in Beijing, said she does the quiz whenever she has time after work.
“It was not only the prize that attracted me, but also the thrill of knowing I could still remember what I learned back in high school 20 years ago,” she said, adding she has won 22 yuan in total for twice being one of the winners.
Fighting for attention
The shows have attracted sponsors, bringing in tens of millions of yuan in advertising revenues for the apps.
“On the Internet, it’s all about fighting for users’ time. Hardly any product can keep their attention for 30 minutes like the quiz has. It has expanded the possibilities of profit,” said Yu Dan, a founder of Huajiao.
Huang Bin, a technical director for a quiz competition with China’s Internet giant Tencent, said since the instant popularity of quiz shows this year, at least 10 companies in the fields of online education, news, games and other sectors, have added live-quiz buttons to
their apps. While the craze for online quiz shows continues, some apps have become known for “unintentional errors” during their quizzes. On Sunday, Beijing’s Internet watchdog ordered Huajiao to conduct a thorough inspection of its content after Taiwan and Hong Kong were listed as countries in one of its questions. The app has issued a statement of apology. Other apps also apologized for their errors, such as declaring Jiangsu Province the origin of the famous Chinese snack roujiamo – it is actually Shaanxi Province. It later compensated users with extra revival cards. Chen Liteng, an assistant analyst with a Chinese e-commerce research center, said online streaming apps had won over many users with the quizzes, but the method of luring users with big cash prizes and celebrity hosts was not sustainable. “This is perhaps only a short-term thing,” he said.