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A Brief History Of Sporcle The First 10 Years

Leo Migdal
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a brief history of sporcle the first 10 years

Sporcle isn’t just a website, or an app, or an entertaining evening in a bar at night. Sporcle is a company dedicated to trivia and the all important mentally stimulating diversion. Here is its story. In late 2006 and early 2007 after leaving a company he helped found, Matt Ramme was looking for something new. Ramme had an entrepreneurial spirit and was looking for a way to combine his love of sports with user-to-user interaction. He had an idea for a website that would allow users to prognosticate sporting events in a fantasy sports type of environment.

He created a site that allowed anyone to be an oracle with a sporting chance and called the site Sporcle. Ramme asked a graphic designer friend create a logo for him that incorporated a fun-looking crystal ball to help round out the idea. He chose the color orange as the color scheme because it was associated with joy and represented enthusiasm, happiness, creativity, and determination. With the help of his longtime friend and fellow entrepreneur Ali Aydar, Ramme launched Sporcle on January 30th, 2007. Users could create an account, join or create a group and predict what teams might win within the NFL, NHL, NBA, and other sporting leagues. The site got some traction and a couple hundred users created accounts.

However, the problem was that Ramme was a one man show and updating results across various sports leagues week over week was a tedious process. For example, Ramme had to update Sporcle to reflect the NHL playoffs while on vacation in Europe during the spring of 2007. The other problem – he didn’t really like what he had created. With Sporcle up and running Ramme was busy but still had time for side projects. Ramme and his wife were avid New York Times crossword lovers and regular Jeopardy watchers. He noticed that most of these puzzles, games, and trivia-related activities shared many common traits.

It helped to know the US Presidents, state capitals, periodical table of elements, and other subjects one often learned in middle and high school. Initially, Ramme made a series of flash cards to quiz himself, but soon took to the internet to see if there was a easier way to test himself on more topics. The problem was there weren’t many online sites in place that helped people (re)learn these topics. Frustrated with the poor options out there, Ramme created a basic page that quizzed him on the US Presidents. Sensing that others might share the same interest, he posted the quiz on Sporcle on July 2nd, 2007 and promptly went camping. Sporcle is a trivia and pub quiz website created by trivia enthusiast Matt Ramme.[1] First launched on April 23, 2007, the website allows users to play and make quizzes on a wide range of...

Sporcle hosts over one million user-made quizzes that have been played over 5 billion times. In 2018, the site expanded its offerings to include weekly, live pub quizzes. The company is headquartered in Seattle and the Detroit metropolitan area.[2] Some games on Sporcle require the user to name all of the items within a given subject—such as presidents of the US, Best Picture Oscar-winning movies, or countries whose names are also legal words... Quizzes may also be clickable, have pictures and slideshows, be in crossword format, or involve a map.[3][4] Players can play quizzes alone, with or without a timer, challenge other users with their scores, or compete against other users in live showdowns.

Quizzes can come in nine game types: Classic, Clickable, Grid, Map, Multiple Choice, Order Up, Picture Box, Picture Click, and Slideshow, each of which can be played in a variety of ways, including Minefield,... The type and method by which users will complete the quiz is chosen by the quiz creators. We’ve all heard it - the Great Sporcle Redesign of 2022 is nearly upon us. Because the site’s design has remained relatively stable for several years now, newer users may not realize that it ever looked different and longer-term users may not remember what the previous iterations looked like. As such, a walk down memory lane might get us better prepared for the coming redesign. 1.

The beginning - Sports predictions (April 2007 front page screenshot) When Sporcle first launched as a domain, it was a sports prediction platform. The oldest screenshot that the Wayback Machine has is this one from April of 2007. If you’ve wondered about the origin of the word ‘Sporcle’, take a gander at the upper right-hand portion of the screen here: 2. The Sporcle we know - Quizzes!

(July 2007 front page screenshot) In July of 2007, a site capture appears with the first quiz on the site - The U.S. Presidents quiz that we still know and love. The sports predictions are still there, but the seeds of modern Sporcledom are planted: On the morning of July 4th, 2007, the US Presidents quiz made the front page of digg.com (which in 2007 was a pretty big deal). In one day that quiz garnered over 100,000 plays.

However, the problem was that Ramme was a one man show and updating results across various sports leagues week over week was a tedious process. For example, Ramme had to update Sporcle to reflect the NHL playoffs while on vacation in Europe during the spring of 2007. In early 2008, Ramme was having lunch with Derek Pharr, a friend and former colleague who was a project manager at Adobe Systems Inc. By late 2008, it was clear that the demand for quiz creation was exceeding their ability to create content. On September 23rd, 2009 anyone could come to Sporcle to create an account of their own. Sporcle is a trivia and pub quiz website created by trivia enthusiast Matt Ramme.[1] First launched on April 23, 2007, the website allows users to play and make quizzes on a wide range of...

Sporcle hosts over one million user-made quizzes that have been played over 5 billion times. In 2018, the site expanded its offerings to include weekly, live pub quizzes. The company is headquartered in Seattle and the Detroit metropolitan area.[2] Some games on Sporcle require the user to name all of the items within a given subject—such as presidents of the US, Best Picture Oscar-winning movies, or countries whose names are also legal words... Quizzes may also be clickable, have pictures and slideshows, be in crossword format, or involve a map.[3][4] Players can play quizzes alone, with or without a timer, challenge other users with their scores, or compete against other users in live showdowns.

Quizzes can come in nine game types: Classic, Clickable, Grid, Map, Multiple Choice, Order Up, Picture Box, Picture Click, and Slideshow, each of which can be played in a variety of ways, including Minefield,... The type and method by which users will complete the quiz is chosen by the quiz creators. Since 2007, people across the globe have created over 1.4 million quizzes on Sporcle, a media and entertainment website and business focused on trivia. With 100 million page views per month, Sporcle’s popularity has even extended beyond digital, giving way to a pub trivia business. Founded by Matt Ramme, Sporcle was originally a place intended to allow people to make predictions on sports events. Upon initial launch, the site didn't gain as much traction as Ramme wanted.

So, Ramme kept the site’s name - a portmanteau of “sports” and "oracle,” but decided instead to create a quiz about U.S. presidents. “If you know your presidents, you’re going to get crossword answers, you’re going to do well in Jeopardy,” Ramme explained in a 2016 Sporcle video. The quiz took off and received a big boost in traffic from an online news aggregator. Sporcle has come a long way since its early days, bypassing the 4 billion plays mark in 2021. The company now operates about 500 live trivia nights per week in bars and restaurants across 29 states and even owns a bar and restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan called Haymaker Public House,...

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