The ‘Jeopardy!’ GOAT Tournament Required An Insane Amount Of Research

Now that the Jeopardy! GOAT Tournament has come to an end, with Ken Jennings taking home the $1 million grand prize and the right to text “i’m the goat, who dis” to James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter in the middle of the night, the team behind the four-night event has revealed how they put the whole thing together. Rob Mills, ABC’s head of alternative series, specials, and late night, met with Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman about a primetime special “several years ago,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, but it was all talk until Holzhauer when on his unprecedented run last year.

For the tournament to work, the Jeopardy! staff did a ton of research, including a through examination of every clue from Jennings, Holzhauer, and Rutter’s previous appearances. “Once we wrote the games,” Friedman said, “then we had to go back and compare all this material with all the games that have been played previously by these three contestants, so we weren’t repeating clues that might have been asked previously.”

“It was a scrubbing process of comparing these subjects and categories and responses to all of the games, the hundreds of games, that these three collectively have played before. That’s where our database certainly came in handy.” (Via)

All the hard work from the game show’s team of researchers was worth it: the GOAT tournament averaged 14.6 million viewers per episode. And inspired this good tweet.

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) January 15, 2020