Missy Fierro and her friends spent the Fourth of July weekend last year playing The Traitors. The game ran three nights. There was plenty of finger-pointing, and a few friendships took a bruise. They've played four more times since. Nobody had to sell them a thing. They copied the game from TV.
Esther Zuckerman's piece in the Weekend Journal's Off Duty section is about what happened next. Fans like Fierro helped turn a reality show into a business. The game is simple, like Mafia or Avalon. A few players are secret traitors. The rest, the faithfuls, run missions to add money to a shared prize pot, then argue over who's lying and vote someone out. Anyone can play it at a kitchen table. Social media filled up with people doing exactly that.
Then the owners caught up
The show started as a Dutch format in 2021 and now runs in more than 40 territories, including India and Serbia. It landed on Peacock in 2023 with Alan Cumming hosting in kilts, and this year it won all seven Emmys it was up for. NBC's new version, The Traitors: New Blood, uses only regular people. Its two premiere episodes averaged 6.6 million viewers. More than 80,000 people applied, according to NBC. In the U.K., around nine million watched the BBC premiere of the celebrity version's second season. The prize on NBC's show is up to $250,000. It's a game-show pot, with nothing wagered.
Here's the business. The villains' hooded cloaks sell for $47 and move all year, says Nick Smith, who ran licensing at All3Media International, the rights owner, before leaving. The company is now called Banijay Entertainment after a merger. The official board game is $42. A live experience in London sold out from September through Christmas 2025, with prime-time tickets around $73. A West End stage show is planned for next year. On WhatsApp, a group of up to 30 can pay $12 each to play a game hosted by a bot. About 10,000 people have signed up. Smith's summary of all of it is short. “A lot of it was driven by what fans were doing.” TV critic Andy Denhart says the rules make it “a safe space” to test what you can get away with.
Our read
Our read, for the business owners who read us (Career). The owners didn't invent the at-home Traitors party. Fans did. The owners noticed, then sold the gear for it. That's the whole lesson. The most valuable product line is often the thing customers are already doing with what you sell, for free, in their own living rooms. Watch what they do with it. Then put a price on the version you can make better than they can. A $47 cloak is a souvenir of a feeling people already had.
Here's the line in your plan this touches. If you own a business, its value sits on one line of your retirement plan, and that number depends on revenue a buyer can see. This week, write down one thing your customers already do with your product that you don't charge for. That's your cloak. If you don't own a business, the line is the entertainment budget, where $12 games and $47 cloaks add up quietly. Either way, it's a line worth looking at together before the next season lands.