When is a little competition TOO much competition?

When your audience is really getting into your game show, that's generally a good thing. The teams are cohesive and working together, the adrenaline is flowing, emotion is high...but sometimes things get a bit, well, out of control.

We were recently hosting a game show event and coaching the game show host on how to get the teams pumped up. There are several ways to do this:

1. Get teams cheering (call out teams/team names and ask them if they're ready to play/if they're going to win)

2. Recap scores

3. Reveal prizes

4. Raise the stakes

But when we started playing the game show, we found that our worries about getting the audience into the game were completely unfounded. The audience was coming off 7 hours of training and content, and they were *ready* to compete and ready to play. (It didn't hurt that they were sales people and competitive by nature.) It was a little overwhelming. Our concern about getting them cheering quickly turned into concern for our neighboring rooms.

So when things get a little too rowdy, what can you do? Here are some tips:

1. Slow down the game play. Take a moment to get to know the team captains.

2. Ask more involved questions. Go outside multiple-choice/rapid-fire questions and get into a meatier open-ended question scenario.

3. Keep prizes small. We find that keeping prizes small doesn't usually mitigate the enthusiasm, but it does keep the competition from getting nasty.

4. Turn down the volume. Sometimes just asking for half-volume can keep the energy up while keeping the disruption down.