Chances are you’re already one of the 2.2 million people who’s been roped into playing HQ, the live mobile trivia game started by Vine co-founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. But if you’re not, now’s a really good time to download the app.
On Wednesday, HQ is rolling out a bonus game on top of its regular noon and 6 p.m. shows. That third game is sponsored by Warner Bros. and tied to the future releases of three different movies, the first of which is this week’s Ready Player One (out March 29). It’s the second of two inaugural sponsorship deals announced via the app, electronic billboards in New York and L.A., and social media platforms (the first partnership was with Nike and aired Monday night—four winners split $100,000 and each received a pair of limited edition HQ Air Max sneakers in honor of the brand’s Air Max day).
📍 Figueroa & 12th Street, LA pic.twitter.com/wxXrxsbPcO
— HQ Trivia (@hqtrivia) March 25, 2018
That hundo-grand was the most money ever awarded by the app, but that’s about to change two days from now. In a deal that cost Warner Bros. a reported $3 million and marks a watershed moment in the mostly unexplored arena of mobile advertising, the film studio will be sponsoring a game with a $250,000 purse. According to AdAge, which broke the news, a number of the questions will be tied to Ernest Cline’s best selling book and Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation (better brush up on Anorak’s Almanac, eh?).
This Wednesday, Ready Player One and HQ Trivia invite you to join the leaderboard! Download the HQ Trivia App to play: https://t.co/FsnefCe3T9 pic.twitter.com/xLwhxvhNM4
— Ready Player One (@readyplayerone) March 26, 2018
Surely this is the first of many sponsorship deals to come for HQ, which has up to this point stayed relatively quiet about its plans for monetizing its shaky business model without incorporating in-game advertisements. At least we have our answer on that—even if we rarely have the answers to Scott Rogowsky aka Host Malone aka Quiz Khalifa’s questions otherwise.
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