A game show is a type of radio, television, or streaming program in which contestants, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering trivia questions or solving puzzles, usually for prizes. In a game show, prizes can typically be won in a single match (in some cases, particularly in the ones that offer record-setting prizes, contestants can play multiple matches and accumulate a larger total), though the exact definition of a game show in the modern era is more broad compared to when game shows began in the early 20th century. Jeopardy! is a game show where contestants can continue to play on the show for an unlimited amount of time (as long as they keep winning) and Jeopardy! is, to date, the only trivia-based game show that allows contestants to make unlimited consecutive appearances. Game shows are usually distinguishable from reality television competition shows, in which the competition consumes an entire season of episodes, though some athletic-based shows are exceptions to this rule (see below for more information).
Beginning with the first five-figure and six-figure game show jackpots in the mid-1950s, a succession of contestants on various quiz shows of the era each set records. Teddy Nadler of The $64,000 Challenge, the highest-scoring contestant of the 1950s era, was not surpassed until 1980, when Thom McKee won $312,700 on Tic-Tac-Dough. Between 1999 and 2001, during a brief boom in high-stakes game shows, the record was broken six times. Both the 1955–1958 and 1999–2001 eras of rapidly set and broken records were driven primarily by one-upmanship between the networks each trying to secure bragging rights and ratings by inflating their prize offerings, rather than the merits of the contestants themselves. American daytime television has historically had smaller prize budgets for game shows that air in that daypart.
, the top second through fourth winners in American game show history all earned the majority of their winnings from the quiz show Jeopardy!, which has aired since 1984 and has had no hard earnings limit since 2003. Ken Jennings is the second highest-earning American game show contestant of all time, having accumulated a total of $5,796,214 as of July 2025. Jennings took his record back from Brad Rutter as the highest-earning contestant (a record Rutter had held since 2014) by virtue of his victory on January 14, 2020, in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament.
On March 25, 2025, David Genat, an Australian model and television personality, surpassed both Jennings and Rutter and became the highest-earning contestant on a single American game show, after winning $5,800,000 on the second-season finale of Deal or No Deal Island. Deal or No Deal Island is a hybrid format combining the existing game Deal or No Deal with an elimination reality competition.
Daytime game shows Most daytime game show top prizes were limited to $25,000 during the 1960s and 1970s, a restriction made for both budgetary concerns and to assuage criticism that arose from the 1950s quiz show scandals. The limits were usually imposed by the networks themselves; CBS, for example, had a limit of $25,000 that increased during the 1980s up to $125,000 during the 1990s. In 1975, ABC also imposed a limit of $30,000 which was eventually dropped by 1977. NBC, however, opted not to employ such a limit and allowed show producers to set them if they saw fit.
Single day record The single day record for shows in daytime television was set in 1984 by Michael Larson, who won $110,237 () on Press Your Luck. Larson achieved this record by memorizing the show's board patterns, repeatedly hitting the board's squares that awarded contestants money and an additional spin, which would, in turn, replace the spin he had just used, effectively allowing him to spin the board in the second round as long as he wanted. Because of this, his game had to be split into two episodes (which aired June 8 and June 11), as his turn caused the game to go well over the show's half-hour allotted time. At the time of the show's airing, CBS only allowed contestants to win up to $50,000 on a game show (contestants would retire after winning $25,000); the winnings limit increased to $75,000 in November and $100,000 in 1986 (and later $125,000 by 1990) before being permanently eliminated in 2006. In March 2003, Game Show Network produced a documentary about the event featuring Ed Long and Janie Litras-Dakan, the contestants Larson handily defeated in 1984.
In 2006, set a new record by winning $147,517 on the 35th-season premiere of The Price Is Right, winning a Dodge Caravan playing "Push Over", a $1,000 cash bonus in the Showcase Showdown, and both showcases, one of which included a Dodge Viper. In 2013, Chrobak-Sadowski was succeeded by Sheree Heil, who set the record by winning $170,345 on The Price Is Right "Best of 2013" special aired December 30, 2013 by winning an Audi R8 playing "Gas Money", $10,000 cash and Prada shoes. In 2016, Heil was succeeded by Christen Freeman, who set the record by winning $210,000 on October 28, during the show's "Big Money Week" special. As Cliff Hangers was the episode's Big Money game, game rules were modified to offer a top prize of $250,000, which was reduced by $10,000 for every step the mountain climber took. In addition to her One Bid prize and an additional $1,000 won during the Showcase Showdown, Freeman's grand total was $212,879, setting a new daytime record.
The current single-day record holder is Michael Stouber, who won a total of $262,743 on the October 14, 2019, episode of The Price Is Right. Stouber's appearance occurred during a special "Big Money Week" promotion in which games normally played for standard prizes had increased values or special cash awards offered. Stouber played the pricing game Plinko, normally played for a top prize of $50,000. On this special episode, the top prize was increased to $1,000,000, with the middle slot's value increased from $10,000 to $200,000. Stouber won a total of $202,000 during the game, plus his showcase and an accumulating jackpot of prizes (worth $29,657).
Overall winnings record 1955–1958
During the early quiz show boom of the mid-1950s, Richard McCutcheon set the first major winnings record by winning the title prize on The $64,000 Question on September 13, 1955, matched shortly thereafter by Joyce Brothers on December 3, despite producers attempting to give her questions they thought she could not answer. Ethel Park Richardson set the next winnings record of $100,000 on The Big Surprise on December 10.
Richardson's record would stand for more than a year, before being surpassed by Charles Van Doren on January 21, 1957, who was playing Twenty One. Van Doren, who won $129,000 total, was almost immediately passed by on February 10 by 11-year-old Leonard Ross. Ross, through earlier winnings on The Big Surprise and a new appearance on The $64,000 Question, reached $164,000. Ross's total was surpassed by ten-year-old Robert Strom, on The $64,000 Question on April 16. Strom would go on to win $242,600 in various game show appearances by mid-1958. Finally, Teddy Nadler collected winnings on The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge through 1957 and 1958 sufficient to eclipse Strom's winnings on August 24, 1958, on the way to $264,000 ().
1950s quiz show scandals
Nadler's record would stand for more than two decades, because in the fall of 1958, allegations that many big-money quiz shows were fixed were corroborated; several of the programs under scrutiny were almost immediately cancelled. Herb Stempel, who had won $49,500 on Twenty One, openly admitted that his defeat by Charles Van Doren had been scripted. Van Doren, by comparison, insisted he had wanted to do the show honestly and refused to speak on the topic for decades afterward, until writing an essay on the subject for The New Yorker in 2008. Joyce Brothers's winnings, which added up to $128,000 after a follow-up win on The $64,000 Challenge, were ultimately upheld as legitimate, and she went on to a prolonged career as a psychologist and media personality. Nadler, a middle-school dropout, failed a civil service exam trying to get a temporary job with the United States Census Bureau in 1960. His breadth of knowledge was never questioned; Nadler was not implicated for any role in the quiz show scandals. In a 1970 Nadler interview and article, people connected with the shows Nadler was on stated that he "had been shown some questions before air time, but it didn't matter when he saw them – he knew the answers anyway." Nadler died on May 23, 1984, at the age of 74.
The quiz show scandals caused sweeping changes in television game show production. These changes, which lasted decades, included the imposition of limits on future prize amounts, limits on the number of times game champions could return, and a change in emphasis in most game shows away from "recall of factual knowledge" as the means to win. As with much programming of the early 1960s, game shows of the era were criticized for dumbing down; Let's Make a Deal, a breakout hit game show that debuted in 1963, was belittled as "mindless" and "demeaning to traders and audiences alike". The establishment of the original version of Jeopardy!, with its low stakes (no contestant won more than $12,000 including tournament play during the show's original 11-year daytime run) and five-game limit, helped ease the stigma against the quiz show.
1980s A reboot of Tic-Tac-Dough, which by 1980 was running in syndication, did allow its returning champion to play until defeated, and had no winnings cap. When Tic-Tac-Dough games ended in ties, potential game winnings would carry over to the next game, and both champion and challenger would return. With this play structure, U.S. Naval officer Thom McKee began a winning streak on Tic-Tac-Dough that carried from the spring of 1980 into the 1980–1981 season. McKee passed Nadler's record in tapings recorded over the summer of that year as revealed in a leak to the press. McKee won $312,700 () in cash and prizes in 43 games, which included eight cars (on Tic-Tac-Dough a contestant received a new car after every fifth game won). McKee's record on Tic-Tac-Dough was not surpassed by another player, and this was in part because when WCBS-TV in New York purchased the right to air the syndicated Tic-Tac-Dough in 1983, CBS (the station's owner) realized that airing a game show without a winnings cap on a station it owned was a violation of its own Broadcast Standards and Practices. CBS requested to the producers of Tic-Tac-Dough that a winnings limit of $50,000 be imposed, and the show complied with this request.
While Thom McKee was the biggest solo game show winner until 1999, nine couples on The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime shared the show's top prize of $1,000,000 awarded in a combination of prizes and a long-term annuity, during that show's run in syndication from January 1986 to May 1987.
1999–2004: Million-dollar game shows