About Fat City Entertainment: who we are, and why you’d want to work with us.
(tl;dr -> We’re Awesome Entertainers, and we’ve been at it since 1999.)
We are a society of Entertainers who love bringing people together. Believe it or not, we even have morals and scruples too. As Entertainers, we have an obligation to unite audiences and we break down prejudices (I really wanted to leave untie here as an auto-correct). We really are trying to make the world a better place the best way we know how... With a microphone.
I’ve been doing this since 1999
I’ve been hosting a lot longer than this website has been around. My first shows were in 1999, hosting “Name That Tune” for TNT Enterprizes in Calgary, later working for Karaoke World and others before beginning with my own companies. First was “The Party Factory”, and now Fat City.
More than twenty-five years of standing in front of rooms is really the only qualification that matters here. Every game we sell got tried out on a live crowd first — which is why the questions land, why the rounds are the length they are, and why the songs are ones people actually shout along to. You can’t work that out on paper. You find it out on a Tuesday night in a half-full bar.
More than twenty-five years of standing in front of rooms is really the only qualification that matters here. Every game we sell got tried out on a live crowd first — which is why the questions land, why the rounds are the length they are, and why the songs are ones people actually shout along to. You can’t work that out on paper. You find it out on a Tuesday night in a half-full bar.
What we actually make
Two kinds of thing, and you host both yourself.
Music dobOFF is our music bingo. Download it, print it, play it. Each pack prints up to 250 randomized cards — two to a sheet of letter paper — so the same purchase covers a living room or a packed brewery, and you can run it again next year. There are 43 packs to choose from, from Golden Oldies to Zoo Rock to Food Fight, and the Gold Club has all 50 games in one go.
If you want the playbook behind all that and not just the cards, I wrote it down — The Music Bingo Handbook covers the setup, the pacing, and the hosting moves that turn a Tuesday crowd into regulars.
Here’s the part I’m proudest of: 56 of those packs come with a ready-made Spotify playlist and 54 with an Apple Music one. You press play. You don’t spend your Sunday hunting down 33 songs and putting them in order. Most people selling bingo cards hand you a PDF and wish you luck.
Fat Bottom Trivia is the game show side — a “Game Show” style event closer to Jeopardy!, but more interactive, with side-games, images and video, and Hosts who get in close with the audience. It’s not just trivia, it’s an experience for everyone.
Music dobOFF is our music bingo. Download it, print it, play it. Each pack prints up to 250 randomized cards — two to a sheet of letter paper — so the same purchase covers a living room or a packed brewery, and you can run it again next year. There are 43 packs to choose from, from Golden Oldies to Zoo Rock to Food Fight, and the Gold Club has all 50 games in one go.
If you want the playbook behind all that and not just the cards, I wrote it down — The Music Bingo Handbook covers the setup, the pacing, and the hosting moves that turn a Tuesday crowd into regulars.
Here’s the part I’m proudest of: 56 of those packs come with a ready-made Spotify playlist and 54 with an Apple Music one. You press play. You don’t spend your Sunday hunting down 33 songs and putting them in order. Most people selling bingo cards hand you a PDF and wish you luck.
Fat Bottom Trivia is the game show side — a “Game Show” style event closer to Jeopardy!, but more interactive, with side-games, images and video, and Hosts who get in close with the audience. It’s not just trivia, it’s an experience for everyone.
Try it before you spend anything
The Bingo Card Generator is free and always has been. Type in your own squares, print a set of cards, run a night tonight. No account, no email, no trial period. If you’ve never hosted before, that plus the rules is genuinely everything you need to get started.
There are also 109 posts on the blog going back to 2016, written from actual shows — what worked, what died on its face, and what I’d do differently.
There are also 109 posts on the blog going back to 2016, written from actual shows — what worked, what died on its face, and what I’d do differently.
Where we work
Everywhere, more or less. The games download from this website, so they work the same in Calgary, Charlotte or Christchurch — people are already hosting Fat Bottom Trivia and Music dobOFF in countries around the world, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
If you’d rather we ran the show ourselves, we’re not limited to any one place. For a reasonable price, we travel to you — tell us your date and venue and we’ll be straight with you about whether we can cover it.
If you’d rather we ran the show ourselves, we’re not limited to any one place. For a reasonable price, we travel to you — tell us your date and venue and we’ll be straight with you about whether we can cover it.
Want to do this for a living?
At Fat City Entertainment, we don’t really have employees, we have Hosts. Fat City Hosts are freelance entrepreneurs, just like me. People use our games to make money — we know that, and we want to help you do it too.
If that sounds like a career path, start with The Host Handbook: How To Start A Successful Trivia Night, which is on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. Or just email me — (dustin@fatcityentertainment.com) — I read them all, even if it takes me a bit.
If that sounds like a career path, start with The Host Handbook: How To Start A Successful Trivia Night, which is on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. Or just email me — (dustin@fatcityentertainment.com) — I read them all, even if it takes me a bit.
The most important thing, though, is that the show goes on — that somewhere tonight a room full of people who came in as strangers are arguing about a song lyric. That’s the whole job.
Yours truly,
Dusty Ramsbottom,
Entertainer & Founder, Fat City Entertainment
Yours truly,
Dusty Ramsbottom,
Entertainer & Founder, Fat City Entertainment