Publisher’s Note: This article has been updated with new information on January 8, 2024.
The play-in games, announced here last month on The Jeopardy! Fan, that will be added to Winter 2024’s Champions Wildcard event will be airing on TuneIn Radio. These extra audio-only games will be hosted by Buzzy Cohen, who hosted the 2021 Tournament of Champions.
This news was confirmed earlier today on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast by Michael Davies and Sarah Foss.
Further information regarding the rollout of these episodes will be released by TuneIn Radio on Wednesday, January 10, as per a statement from the show.
Editorially, I am very glad to see that these games will be given some sort of airtime by the show; it’s important for transparency’s sake that this was done. I’m also glad for TuneIn’s sake that they’re able to continue their partnership with Jeopardy! and receive this new content.
Original article:
Many fans were wondering how the 54 spots in the upcoming Season 39 Champions Wildcard in January would be determined, being that there were going to be more potential contenders than the 54 spots available in the event.
We now have our answer.
According to a Season 39 contestant who has not taken part (nor will take part) in any Season 40 play, speaking to The Jeopardy! Fan on condition of anonymity, the lowest-ranked 1-day champions will have to compete in play-in games in order to qualify for Champions Wildcard. The play-in games won’t be aired on television and won’t have prize money. Champions Wildcard contestants were informed of this development via email.
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This is an unprecedented move by the show in terms of asking contestants to compete just for advancement, and this would certainly be the first instance of games being played but not actually airing on television.
The metric by which these players will be ranked has not been confirmed; though The Jeopardy! Fan does suspect that a likely metric would be money won.
Editorially, I’m not fundamentally opposed to the idea of “play-in” games, and I do think that it’s an interesting way to fit this competition within the constraints of a 230-episode season, especially considering the number of fans who are looking forward to the return of regular play. However, I do think that for transparency’s sake, the play-in shows do need to be posted online, as having to explain to fans that their favorite player lost an unaired play-in game and won’t be appearing any more on television, without giving those fans a chance to see it for themselves, doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant feeling to me.
This is a developing news story and may be updated as further information is obtained.
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Precedent to play-in games that didn’t air on TV: the British show “Fifteen to One” (1988-2003) would sometimes have an unaired playoff to determine who took the last spot in the Grand Final. The explanation simply amounted to “these people had a play-off, and the winner was X person, who is here with us today.”
I appreciate that, but the completionist in me says “you have a YouTube channel, please post it.”
They have the precedent of posting full episodes to their YouTube channel, too—see, the Amy/Matt/Mattea exhibition match from Election Day 2022, and before the High School Reunion Tournament, they posted all 20 episodes of both Teen Tournaments that fed into it.
First of all, reporting like this, outside the official channels of the show, is not something that “the show’s PR flack” would do. Time for an apology, ReganLynch.
I’ve posted some thoughts at Syntactic Reversal; link to the post below. The big one is: not making these play-in games available at all to the public is a terrible idea, especially in the context of Davies’s claim that Jeopardy! is a sport.
https://mattcarberry.substack.com/p/play-in-games-in-my-champions-wildcard
I’d love to see these play-in games even as just bonus online content. Why create more lost media? We’re already missing a bunch of old episodes as it is still.
I was SHOCKED by this! However, the reason was because when it was first announced about so many lower-level champions being allowed to funnel into Champions Wildcard, this idea immediately came to mind. But I never thought they would actually do it because it would cost them almost as much overhead to accomplish these preliminary matches as it does for on-air ones, with nothing to show for it other than WHICH people do make it to the on-air games. YouTube is an option, but what are the stations that license syndicated Jeopardy! going to feel about that? Honestly, the reason I did not post my idea was because I thought I would just be derided for it!
If they are going to consider wild ideas, I propose instead of allowing 1-game “champions” to vie for wildcard slots, how about setting up “re-matches” where all 3 original contestants go against each other again and see if the same person comes out on top or not. My intent is that they would vie for actual prize money, but the winner would not “go on” to any other slot/game, just be a stand-alone “what if” situation that could air in the summer which is usually for reruns.