‘Jeopardy’ Showrunner Reveals Season 40 Plans Amid WGA Strike: A “Second Chance Tournament” and Increased Runner-Up Prizes 

Jeopardy showrunner Michael Davies just revealed the plans for Season 40 during a recent episode of the Inside Jeopardy podcast, as the game show is set to move forward despite the ongoing writers strike.

“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 on the podcast. “We’re 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.”

By “non-original material,” Davies means the show will be using “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 seasons of the show.”

However, Celebrity Jeopardy will have new clues because all of the material was written before the WGA strike began in May.

This news comes after a number of Jeopardy contestants vowed not to compete in the annual Tournament of Champions if the show chooses to film the new season using recycled material.

But that’s not all. Davies also announced that runner-up contestants will receive bigger prizes moving forward, enough to cover travel costs, which is a major complaint some contestants have had with the show in recent years.

“A major announcement we can make today is that we are increasing the second and third place prize amounts by $1,000 each,” he said — and that means second-place winners will now receive $3,000 and third-place winners will get $2,000.

“This is something that we’ve 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 explained. “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.”

A recent statement from the show noted that Jeopardy plans to push back any Season 39 postseason events, such as the Tournament of Champions, and instead focus on original episodes.

“Just as we did, led by Alex Trebek, during the 2007-2008 strike, we will deliver first-run episodes again this fall to more than 200 affiliate stations nationwide,” the statement says.

Jeopardy! airs weeknights at 7/6c. Check the website for local listings.