‘Jeopardy!’ Season 40 Will Use Repeat Questions and Contestants Due to WGA Strike and Increase Runner-Up Winnings

On Mondays episode of the Jeopardy! podcast Inside Jeopardy!, showrunner Michael Davies clarified how the trivia series would proceed with its fall season amid the ongoing WGA strike and announced a sweetening of the pot for second and third-place winners.

I believe, principally, that it would not be fair to have new contestants making their first appearance on the Alex Trebek Stage with non-original material, Davies said. Were going to open the season with a second chance tournament for players from Season 37 who lost their initial game. Winners from that will advance to a Season 37 and Season 38 Champions Wildcard.

Davies explained that questions asked of contestants in these second chance episodes will be a combination of material that our WGA writers wrote before the strike, which is still in the database, and material that has been re-deployed from multiple multiple seasons of the show.

Celebrity Jeopardy!, however, will feature completely original material. According to Davies, material for the spinoffs second season was completed before the WGA went on strike.

A major announcement we can make today, Davies also said, is that we are increasing the second and third place prize amounts by $1,000 each. Now, second place winners will receive $3,000 and third place winners will receive $2,000. The move was made in response to growing criticisms over the fact that runners up must fund their own travel to participate in the show.

This is something that weve been working on ever since I really took the reins of the show, something that obviously is discussed widely within our social communities and within the community of our contestants, Davies added. We understand that post-COVID, travel costs have increased. We understand how complicated funding a trip to Jeopardy! is for many contestants within our community, and we think this is way about time that we did this.