Made $645 in 2 months from hosting game nights - how can I scale this up?

★★ signal-medium r/smallbusiness · ↑ 58 · 💬 86 · 2026-01-06 · kw: slow moving inventory · open on reddit ↗

Tool

none

Issue

Operator spends 50% of conversion time on manual background checks and screening calls to filter out problematic attendees, directly limiting customer acquisition while trying to scale from 7 to 30 attendees per session.

Cost

$100 profit over 2 months (~$50/month) with unquantified time cost for screening, promotion, and hosting duties that will compound as attendance scales.

Recommendation

Partner with breweries for venue/social media leverage and automated attendee vetting (disputed: one commenter argues the business model itself is unviable at $5/person; another warns of free competitor events).

Date context

2026-01-06; subreddit-based and Facebook group recruitment channels; emerging TikTok/Instagram strategy mentioned as painfully slow.

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

Edit: thanks for all the comments! I'll get back to everyone by tomorrow :) Hey everyone! Just over two months ago, I launched a side project that’s quickly showing potential, and I’d love some advice on how to grow it. **The concept:** • I host regular board game nights at public venues. • Entry fee is $5 cash per person for the entire evening. • People can come alone or with friends, I place them on a table, they play games (not the niche tabletop ones, more social party games), and meet new folks. **Current setup:** • I’ve built a group on a popular social app (300+ members have joined organically, though only a fraction attend these events). • So far, attendance per event has ranged from as little as 2 ppl, to as high as 23 people (although these are the extremes, I have an average attendance of 7 ppl, and am consistently trending higher in recent events). I also happen to have a pretty good return rate, and there are now 6-8 regulars. • Upfront costs: \~$547.22 for several board games, a few bits and bobs (pens, name badges, etc) and the app membership. • Income: \~$645.00 in total (210 the first month, and 435 the second); I’m now officially in profit. • Venue is free (local bars or food courts), so no additional costs on my part there. **Goals:** • I want to grow attendance (30 attendees per session would be solid) and attract specific crowds (young people, 20-30, as well as more women to balance it out) and better leverage social media platforms. **Questions for you (and please share any useful advice):** • How would you scale something like this without raising prices? The $5 fee matches local board game café pricing and I want to keep it the same. • As the group grows, I'm aware that hosting duties will become more and more complicated, but I'm still unsure how to proceed - should I pay someone to help me host? • I’m struggling to reconcile my financial objectives with my willingness to make sure everyone is having a good time; basically, I’m very picky with who I invite. Most of my promo so far has been done through subreddits for the town I live in and Facebook groups – I always do a background check on people first, and have a quick chat with them to gauge the kind of person they are. I do this to avoid having problematic profiles (creeps, scammers, intolerant people, you name it) but this comes at an extra effort, and also highly limits the clients I get (I must lose 50% of potential customers with this system). I know it’s a stupid question even before I ask it, but have some of you found a good way to filter out the bad weeds in a more efficient way, or do you just take the risk to have these sorts of clients anyways? • I've had some suggestions to use a subscription system, but sounds quite complicated to set up logistically, and I like the idea of people having the flexibility of paying per session. Are there any real upsides to this system? • Creative ideas to reach more people? I'm struggling to find people in their twenties - it seems most user pools I'm targeting have 30 year olds...where are all the twenty year olds?? Same goes for finding women – very few of them seem to respond to my posts…I’m trying Instagram and TikTok which I hope might attract these crowds, but growth is painfully slow. • Anything else I should keep in mind moving forward? This is my first entrepreneurial project so I’d really appreciate any insights :)

Top comments (6)

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[score=69] nissansean

I would target hosting these events at local breweries. Especially if it’s during the week on slower days. They normally have extra space and you might be able to partner with them as a host and use their social media to grow the business and attendance. Either way they will appreciate the extra customers walking in the door. Just a thought. When I bartended at a brewery we had a group that would come in every Wednesday and play big board games together, I always thought it was really fun

[score=28] blinkybit

I hate to be a downer but I'm not sure this makes sense as a business. It may make more sense simply as a fun thing that you enjoy, where the entry fees defray some of your costs. As a business, you've made $100 in profits over two months while ignoring the cost of your own time, which includes hosting the game sessions themselves as well as all the time you spend promoting them and recruiting and screening attendees. If you're doing this on a larger scale then you'll also probably want liability insurance. And a larger scale also probably means it's not always you who's personally running the game nights and doing the screenings, so you'll need to pay somebody. Even if it's just you, you should include your own notional "salary" in your figures in order to be realistic and not fool yourself - your time is not free. Try to estimate how much you're ultimately earning per hour of effort, after considering all your costs. To make this work, I think you need to find ways to get more income per session. $5/person seems really low. Maybe buy games at wholesale and sell physical copies during sessions at retail prices: people like instant gratification. Sell game-related T-shirts and merch. Charge a small fee to indie game companies for including/promoting their games at your sessions. Create a newsletter or social media account for the group with affiliate links to where people can purchase the games that they played, so you earn a commission. Strike a deal with a bar or restaurant to get some percentage of the tab or a flat fee if your session brings in a minimum number of extra people on a normally slow day. Offer a membership option for something like $15/month as an alternative to paying as you go - many people are lazy and will sign up but then come rarely/never.

[score=14] Typical-Sir-9518

Good for you. I'm not sure how long you will be able to continue charging. I attend a weekly game meetup. It's free and there are anywhere from 25 to 40 ppl in attendance. It has been going for 13 years. I would be worried at some point a few of your attendees will swap contact info and say, "hey, let's just start meeting at X and skip the entrance fee". I recommend introducing at least one new game a month. Keep a real close eye on BGG's lists to stay current on your game selection. This might keep people coming back. All the game stores in my area have free weekly game nights, and game libraries ranging from 10s to 100s. So you need to determine what sets your paid event apart and better than the alternatives. 20s is the wrong demographic IMO. I've been to boardgame conventions and boardgame meetups. The age demographic is more like 35 to 65. I'm guessing about 75% male to female. Also, college kids are pretty savvy using social media to coordinate and would also quickly recognize they don't need to pay someone to play a game. If you are a really good story teller or theater geek, I recommend you look into Blood on the Clocktower and start hosting BotC events. If you get really good, people would definitely pay to attend and most would be regulars. But it doesn't scale well. 10 people at $10 each for 3 hours is not really worth it unless you love it.

[score=4] [deleted]

[removed]

[score=7] Ok-Accountant5450

I don't see this as a business. I find it hard to imagine scaling it. Perhaps the Cafe, Restaurant is the business and these games are bait to the real business.