By Adam Nedeff, researcher for the National Archives of Game Show History
Prizes on game shows seem fairly straightforward. Here’s a nice thing; win the prize. But there’s some slight nuance to it that’s led to muddled or mistaken information being commonly shared over the years. This month, we’re going to dive into one fairly common misunderstood tidbit about what contestants can do when they win a prize on a game show.
There’s (usually) no such thing as “requesting the value of the prize in cash, instead of taking the prize.” Our educated guess is that this misperception came about because winners on game shows got a check instead of getting one or more of their prizes, and friends of those winners just assumed that you can do that. But here’s why that generally doesn’t happen.
Game show prizes can usually be divided into two categories:
FURNISHED PRIZES: These are prizes that the show gets directly from the manufacturers/suppliers either for free, or at a steep discount, in exchange for plugging the manufacturer’s/supplier’s brand on the show. When the prize is won, the manufacturer/supplier ships the prize to the contestant AND pays for the cost to do so.
PURCHASED PRIZES: The show has a budget for buying some prizes outright from catalogs, websites, etc.
The show never tells you which is which in the course of the game, but if you’re paying attention, you can actually suss out if the prize was furnished or purchased.
If the prize was furnished, the announcer will probably say: “Weber brings you the E-210 Gas Grill! It has a sprawling 450 square inches of cast iron cooking area, plus convenient features like the compact open cart design and the practical folding side table. From Weber Grills!”
If the prize was purchased, the announcer will probably say: “This cast-iron gas grill has an open cart design and folding side table.”
If the prize was furnished to the show, there’s no incentive for them to give a contestant the cash value instead. The whole point of the plug was for the show to spend little or no money on the prize; the show would be losing money if they paid the contestant cash instead.
If the prize was purchased, however, the show will very often (but NOT ALWAYS) give a contestant the cash value instead. Since the manufacturer isn’t shipping the prize, the shipping costs would have to be paid for directly by the show. It’s cheaper to ship a check in an envelope than it is to ship a great big prize, and that money would have to be spent anyway, buying a new prize. The show actually saves a little money in that situation by paying the cash instead. But it’s the show that decides to award cash instead of the prize, not the contestant.
If you have a friend who won a lot of loot on The Price is Right, and then they just got a check in the mail instead of any actual prizes, it means that it just so happened that everything that your friend won was purchased prizes; they didn’t win any of the plugged stuff.
In recent years, one exception to the above has emerged. Historically, contestants who won cars were given a slip describing the type of car that they were entitled to. That contestant could go back home, and take that slip to the nearest dealership that had that type of car available. After the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains, it became more difficult to guarantee that specific types of cars would be available at dealerships conveniently located near the winners. Car winners on some game shows now are offered a choice. They can go to a specific dealership in the Los Angeles area where that car is guaranteed to be available, but with the provision that it won’t be delivered to the contestant’s home; the contestant has to figure out those arrangements themselves. Otherwise, the show will give the contestant a cash substitute.
