hot dog eating contest suggestions..
 

My chapter is looking into holding a hotdog eating contest in spring for the greek community. Every house selects one competitor and pays an entrance fee of fifty dollars to represent their house in a nathan's famous style hotdog eating contest.

There will be a men's event and then a women's.
-ten minutes and however many dogs and buns you can eat

Winner gets the Wiener Belt and the title as champion for a year.

I want to keep a Fourth of July BBQ theme going with alot of American flags and stuff. Music playing and we can hold it in our large parkinglot in front of our house.

What would you suggest to keep people interested/busy before the actual hot dog eating event? I was thinking a live band, and a raffle. Do you have anything else that we could do?

I appreciate all suggestions.

We did a similar type of contest, but it was wings rather than hot dogs. We did it a little differently; people competed in teams of four (relay-style) and were timed on how fast they could eat their allotted portion of wings. We ran it in heats of two or three teams and had raffles, audience participation events and live music in between the heats. We kept the games chicken-themed, like a chicken dance contest and pin the wing on the chicken, but I'm sure you could think of games that are suited to your event. Holding raffles and games as well as having music would be a good way to hold interest before and during the competition. Something to consider also might be having some way of audience members donating money to help (or harm) a certain competitor, like each dollar for them gets them an extra five seconds to eat, or each dollar donated against them shaves five seconds off their ten minutes, something like that. Keep a running tally posted to incite people to donate. Best of luck!

I really like that idea of having the crowd give money for time off or on. I think it'd turn into a huge bidding war which will get a ton of money.