Tapping Into More Revenue

AMI Entertainment Reignites Tap TV Trivia for On-Location Earnings Boost

It’s always great when you can bring in a new piece of equipment that earns well, but what’s really great is being able to make more money with the product you already have! For operators of AMI jukeboxes, coming soon is an even easier way to deliver the additional revenue stream provided through the company’s Tap TV Trivia (which will soon be rebranded “AMI Trivia.”)

It’s already possible for operators to offer this money-maker to locations using a small box with the hardware inside that’s connected to a power source, the AMI jukebox and the location TV. “Next year, the software that lives inside this box will also live inside our jukeboxes, and then, all you’ll need is an HDMI cable connecting the jukebox to a television,” said Josh Giles, Product Manager. There will be no need to buy extra hardware to take advantage of in-location trivia games.

“I want to emphasize how big this is,” added VP of Product and Marketing Kapil Mistry. “It’s not just new jukeboxes that will have this capability. Every AMI digital jukebox on your route will be able to have Trivia. Just connect an HDMI cable from the jukebox to the TV and you have it.” The company will showcase this latest development at this month’s IAAPA Expo (booth #107).

For players, Trivia is easy to play – they use AMI’s app on their mobile devices to answer the questions shown on the venue’s TV – and it’s free. The monthly subscription to AMI Trivia is passed on to the location by the operator at whatever markup they choose.

AMI is also reenergizing and revamping its app. In January, the company will roll out AMI Play, which lets people play music, music videos and trivia, and also use app funds to pay to play the operator’s amusement games in the same location.

This enhances the mobile payment options that began earlier this year when AMI partnered with Amusement Connect to produce Mobile Connect. Explained Mistry, “With the Mobile Connect device, we can enable payments for any of your game equipment in a way that is significantly cheaper than tap-to-pay devices that you have to install. We already have about 25 to 30 locations on Amusement Connect today, and with the new app, customers will have access to all of these experiences with one wallet, one account, one app. So, you enter a location, and depending on what is in the venue – music, trivia or arcade – you will get an experience configured for that location.”

Reenergizing Trivia

Explained Mistry, AMI bought Tap TV back in 2012 and developed the content, along with some other entities, up until 2018. The product remained functional, but a change in direction at the juke maker paused new development. Even so, they continued to see growth in that market with new customers joining many of the originals to run trivia nights and casual play in about 1,000 locations.

You can imagine that got their attention. “We decided we needed to look at this product again,” Mistry said, hiring Giles, an avid trivia player with decades of experience, including running his own trivia company.

“For me, trivia has always been culturally an important part of my life,” Giles said. It was the perfect blend of satisfying his insatiable curiosity and providing a mechanism for social interaction, something he accurately observes becomes more challenging as you age and life brings on more responsibilities.

“For me, trivia is the perfect way to have an ‘appointment’ with your friends one night a week. I’m passionate about my friends and relationships in my life and also about trivia, so for me, there is a logical connection,” he said. The popularity of trivia nights across the country shows he’s not alone in this passion.

VP of Sales Chris Owens said, “With this product, we’re delivering on promises we’ve made in the last couple of years: to increase in-venue revenue and to grow the pie. Growing the pie is getting into more locations. This product allows us to do that with a subscription model to add on to the revenue from the jukebox, but also to go in other types of venues and to help operators grow their location base.”

And it’s a value proposition, he said. “At our current price, it’s just about $20 per week, before the markup. If your location had a trivia event with a host coming in to run it every week, it would likely cost you anywhere from $150 to $250 per night – significantly more.”

Added trivia whiz Giles, “I think one of the things that makes us unique is that it checks the box on that weekly trivia demand that we know a lot of locations have now, but it also fills the dead air and the dead space throughout the day.

“With trivia, you’ve got something you can have up on the TV screen that’s fresh and unique,” he said, rather than locations filling “dead” time showing TV programs like Judge Judy and the Price is Right, taking away from jukebox play. And using AMI’s built-in Ad Manager, that also means being able to show ads promoting location specials and upcoming events like trivia. “Frankly,” he added, “I think just filling that dead air and having a mechanism or vehicle to show ads is worth the price alone. And the fact that those are secondary features is what makes this really special.”

Said Sales VP Chris Owens, “We know that for the operator, we have to increase revenue, or same store sales, in a location. If you already have an AMI jukebox in there and you get the opportunity to layer on a subscription, the operator gets to make more money.”

 

“AMI’s trivia product is the perfect way to keep patrons at the bar for maximum entertainment and maximum sales.” – James Smith, Owner, Smithland Enterprises, Texas

Owens expects the new method of connecting directly from the jukebox to the TV will be a game changer. “This might eliminate a little bit of a perceived hurdle in getting the location to buy in to having Tap TV. If you’re just connecting it to a TV, it’s very easy to turn on, and very easy to layer that subscription price and revenue coming back to the operator. That’s how I always sold it when I was an operator trying to pitch locations to put my product in there. It’s the bar’s job to get the people into the location; it’s the operator’s job to keep the people in the seats and this increases dwell time.

“So if they’re at the location and they’re playing a game of trivia and they drink another beer or two and multiple people do that throughout the course of the night or multiple nights throughout the week, think about what that does for the location revenue,” Owens said.

“AMI Trivia is amazing! It’s a great way for our guests to have more fun and socialize and it definitely helps bring in more business for us, as most of our guests work as a ‘team’ to win and rank at the top nationally. We absolutely love it!”  – Todd Isert, GM, Gators Dockside Restaurant, Florida

“The beauty of this is you can continually play music and play trivia at the same time. So it’s relatively seamless. Customers are in the app, they’re selecting music, they’re playing trivia. This is the build-on entertainment platform that offers multiple solutions for the location and multiple avenues for the operator to increase their revenue in locations they’re already in. That’s what’s exciting to us,” Owens said.

And it helps operators keep that location, too, he contends. “Once you install this, your location now has become very sticky. From a competitive standpoint, who’s going to come in and offer something that you’re not already offering? You have the avenue to collect additional revenue from the location. It gives you a competitive advantage versus other competitor operators may have in their market and likewise, it also gives us a competitive advantage versus what our competitors are offering now. It’s pretty much a win-win if you ask me.”

Robust Content, Easy Play

As Mistry explains it, it’s a win-win for players, too. First, trivia doesn’t cost them any money. It’s also fun and easy as they use their mobile devices to open the AMI app and answer questions displayed on the location’s TV.

The trivia content itself is “highly curated,” said Mistry. “A lot of thought goes into this. You have a question, and then you have four answers: two of them are pretty close, one can be pretty funny, one can be just absurd.” Once the question has been answered, AMI Trivia adds a related fun fact. “It’s cheeky and people appreciate that part of our trivia night,” he continued.

“We have 18 themed categories now and we keep building more,” Mistry said. In addition to building out more categories, they also continue to add greater depth within each of them over time.

“There is no trivia product out there that has more depth than we do. We have more questions per category than anybody out there,” he said. Among the categories available are various recent decades (the team is especially pleased with how their ’60s trivia turned out), music, sports, pop culture and travel. There’s one called “Food & Beverage Trivia” with questions covering wine, fine cuisine, fast food, etc. The team has specifically worked to curate content to have broad demographic appeal across a variety of locations.

“We are the best trivia solution out there and usually there are more trivia players than music players because it’s free to play trivia and we’ve got lots of games and content. As I said, this is available for all your jukeboxes, new and old.” He said once you have people playing trivia on the app, they’re just one step away from playing music, too. Amusement game play is the next step.”

“AMI’s trivia product has been valuable to attract and retain regulars at our establishment. Even people that don’t actively participate enjoy reading questions to themselves. Our guests appreciate the variety of trivia games while we are able to advertise food and drink specials and events. At a relatively low price for something restaurant related, AMI Trivia is a no brainer at any place.” – Kevin Laroche, Owner, Hooligans Half-Irish Pub, Tennessee

Summarizing the reinvigorated Tap TV Trivia, Mistry said. “We are not new to trivia and have operators running it in close to 1,000 locations already. You now have trivia through using add-on hardware but soon, all AMI jukeboxes – new and old – will support trivia and we are going to show it at IAAPA. And again, this is with no extra hardware, no maintenance, and a steady monthly subscription that helps operators get into new locations and increase the revenue and engagement at existing locations.”

To learn more about AMI Trivia, visit the company at IAAPA booth 107 or go to amientertainment.com/tap-tv-interactive-trivia.