Host Policies

Introduction

The following policies apply to tournaments run on NAQT questions that involve teams or players from more than one school. Except as noted, they apply to all such tournaments, regardless of their level or nature, unless NAQT has explicitly waived or modified them for a specific tournament or host. Some tournaments (such as collegiate Sectional Championship Tournaments and Community College Sectional Championship Tournaments) are subject to additional policies not covered on this page.

NAQT’s Responsibilities

NAQT will respond promptly to inquiries from tournament hosts (and prospective hosts), coaches, players, and others to help them make informed choices about events they run and attend.

In most cases, NAQT will make questions available to attendees through their Study Library (if set up) after a tournament’s results have been received and processed.

When assigning question sets to tournaments, NAQT will consider geography, local circuit conditions, tournaments’ audiences, whether tournaments take place in person or online, and other factors with the goals of ensuring that quiz bowl is widely available to interested programs and that tournament hosts have reasonable opportunities to draw the types of fields they seek.

Hosts’ Responsibilities

Hosts must give NAQT accurate information about the intended audience of the event, the date(s), and any other information necessary to ensure that suitable questions can be assigned and delivered to the event. This includes prompt notification of any changes. Due to internal question-production deadlines and other factors, NAQT cannot always accommodate date changes.

Hosts must pay for their questions according to the listed prices (unless otherwise agreed in advance).

Hosts must uphold NAQT’s policy on question security. Most notably, this entails telling attendees and prospective attendees what question set(s) will be used.

Hosts must remind attendees not to share question content on the Internet in any form, no matter how private they think the communication may be. This includes the fact that matches may not be recorded or streamed.

Hosts must follow NAQT’s licensing policy. Most notably, this means that hosts may keep a printed copy of the question set, and may give a printed copy of the question set(s) to each school in attendance, but may not distribute the set in any other form, nor to anyone else at any time. Staff may not retain copies of the question set(s) after the end of the event (unless they are also affiliated with the host or an attendee, in which case they may only retain a printed copy). However, due to NAQT granting Study Library access, distributing printed copies is usually unnecessary.

(New for 2023–2024) Hosts must not publicly post (or otherwise make widely available) scoresheets, category statistics, “advanced” statistics, or other results beyond what NAQT posts on its website without permission in advance from NAQT. Such data may be shared with coaches and players of teams in attendance provided that those people agree not to distribute them further.

Within two weeks of the end of the event, hosts must tell NAQT what schools attended and how many teams attended. If any pseudonyms were used, identification of the actual schools is still required. NAQT strongly prefers to get more complete results (including team contact information) and incentivizes doing so by charging an extra fee for failing to provide this information, but identifying the schools and number of teams in attendance is an absolute requirement for question security and proper billing. Events in championship series organized by statewide athletic or activities associations are exempt from this rule because NAQT will work with the associations to obtain the necessary information; events that are not for schools (such as summer opens) are exempt from the school portion of this rule because it would not make sense for such events.

Hosts need to recruit their own staff (moderators, scorekeepers, statisticians, etc.). Hosts are permitted to require that teams provide staff, or incentivize them to do so; however, hosts may not require or incentivize any specific person to work at a tournament, except that coaches may require their own players to do so.

The preceding list is not intended to include tasks like “find teams and staff” without which a tournament simply could not occur. Rather, it primarily covers aspects of a host’s relationship with NAQT.

NAQT may waive or modify these requirements at its discretion.

Recommendations to Hosts

NAQT strongly encourages, but does not require, hosts to do the following:

Host a Tournament

If you’re interested in hosting a tournament, you can fill out our form or write to hosting@naqt.com.

Host a Tournament Email NAQT

Find Tournaments Near You

NAQT maintains an annual schedule of tournaments at various levels.

View Schedule