From 2017 to 2019, New York comedian Scott “Quiz Daddy” Rogowsky hosted HQ Trivia, a popular app-based game show where participants answered increasingly difficult multiple-choice questions. Each day, hundreds of thousands of fans took part in hopes of splitting a jackpot of sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars—but soon after, the fad collapsed. Now, eight years since Rogowsky first auditioned for HQ Trivia, the brokerage Robinhood is bringing Rogowsky back to host its own game show.
After markets close on Wednesday, users of Robinhood’s app will receive a notification inviting them to play a game called “Robinhood Trivia Live.” Like HQ Trivia, players will answer increasingly difficult multiple-choice questions, and those who correctly answer all 12 will split a prize pool of $1 million in Bitcoin. The game show will repeat on Thursday for members of Robinhood Gold, the company’s paid subscription service. Winners will again split $1 million in Bitcoin, but all participants will receive an undisclosed gift of Dogecoin.
“I’ve done a lot of different hosting gigs over the last six years,” Rogowsky told Fortune in a video call from Toy Fair, a convention in New York where he was promoting his own party game. “But, in terms of recreating that HQ type of experience, this definitely hews closest.”
Rogowsky even plans to whip out his HQ Trivia–era catchphrase: “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty!”
Robinhood’s launch of an HQ Trivia–like quiz show isn’t permanent. “Right now, we actually aren’t committing to this being a recurring thing,” Dheerja Kaur, Robinhood’s vice president of product, told Fortune. “We actually want to see how it does.”
Still, it’s another example of how the publicly traded online brokerage has expanded beyond trading in a bid to become a player in financial media and entertainment.
In 2019, Robinhood acquired a popular financial newsletter and podcast company called MarketSnacks, which it rebranded to Robinhood Snacks. And in 2023, it launched its own independent media arm called Sherwood Media, which has since taken over Snacks as well as debuted its own website.
“This is separate from that, but again, part of a bigger strategy around, How do we inform and educate our customers?” Kaur said, in reference to how Robinhood’s game show isn’t the same as its foray into financial news.
For his part, Rogowsky is just excited to be back in front of an audience of potentially millions. Robinhood notched 2.6 million paid subscribers at the end of 2024, according to its most recent annual report. “There are people out there who missed their Quiz Daddy,” the trivia host said. “If you’ve been missing me for the last six years, this is the show to tune into.”
