Tournaments

Tournaments cover one-off or seasonal competitions — from a straight knockout cup to a group stage followed by play-offs. This guide takes you from creating a tournament through to generating fixtures, standings and a bracket.

Creating a tournament

1. Open Tournaments in the sidebar and select New tournament.
2. Fill in the Tournament name and pick a Format (see below).
3. Add a description, start and end dates, a registration deadline, minimum and maximum teams, and an entry fee if you're charging one.
4. Select Create tournament. You'll be taken straight to the new tournament, which starts in Draft.

Choosing a format

The Format dropdown offers four options:

• Knockout — straight elimination, no group stage.
• Group Stage — teams play a round robin within their division; no bracket.
• Group + Knockout — a group stage followed by a knockout bracket for the top teams from each division.
• Group + Play-off — a group stage followed by position play-offs (1st plays 2nd, 3rd plays 4th, and so on within each division) rather than a bracket.

Tip: not sure which to pick? If you want a single champion decided by elimination matches, choose Group + Knockout. If you'd rather every team finish in a ranked position without being knocked out, choose Group + Play-off.

Editing tournament details

Select Edit at the top of the tournament page to open the edit panel. It's split into three sections:

• Identity — name, description, format and status.
• Schedule — start date, end date, registration deadline.
• Capacity & fees — minimum/maximum teams and entry fee.

Tip: once a tournament moves to In progress or Completed, the Format, Schedule and Capacity & fees fields lock — you'll see a "Locked while in progress/completed" note. Status itself can still be changed from here at any time.

Adding teams and divisions

Divisions group teams by age or skill (for example, Under 14s or Division 1) and are what fixtures and standings are organised around.

1. Go to the Settings tab and select Add division.
2. Give it a name, an optional display name, age group and skill level, a colour, and a minimum/maximum number of teams.
3. Select Add division.

To register teams, go to the Teams tab and select Register team, then choose from your organisation's teams. From the same table you can mark a team as paid or unpaid, assign it to a division from the dropdown, or remove it.

Generating the schedule

1. Open the Fixtures tab (or select Generate schedule at the top of the tournament page).
2. Select Generate (or Generate schedule in the empty state). This opens a readiness check showing whether you have dates set, teams registered, venues assigned and scheduling settings configured, plus an estimate of total matches, matches per day and days needed.
3. Select Generate Schedule to confirm. If fixtures already exist, the button reads Clear & Generate Schedule and will delete the existing matches first — this can't be undone.

You can also add a single fixture by hand with Add match, and switch between List and Calendar views once fixtures exist. Use Export scoring sheets to print sheets for officials on the day.

Standings

The Standings tab shows a table per division — played, won, drawn, lost, goals for/against, goal difference and points — updated automatically as results come in. See Recording results for how results get entered.

Generating and managing the knockout bracket

For Group + Knockout tournaments:

1. Open the Bracket tab and select Generate knockout.
2. You'll see which teams have qualified from each division's group standings, based on the "Teams advancing per division" setting under Settings → Format & scoring.
3. Select Generate Knockout Phase to build the bracket.

If you need to rebuild it — for example after correcting a result — select Regenerate bracket. This deletes the existing bracket and its matches (including any completed results) and rebuilds from the current standings, so use it with care.

For Group + Play-off tournaments, a Play-offs card sits at the top of the tournament page instead of a bracket. Select Generate play-offs to seed play-off matches from current standings, and Reorder to change the order matches are played in (matches sharing a time slot are grouped in threes, one per court).

Assigning officials and venues

Use the Officials tab to assign umpires to fixtures — see Officials for the full walkthrough. Use the Venues tab to attach venues and their courts or fields to the tournament, and to mark one as primary.

Simulating results for testing

Select Simulate at the top of the tournament page to open the tournament simulator. This is intended for trying out the public share link before teams register properly, and offers:

1. Simulate group stage — fills in random results for group matches.
2. Generate play-offs from standings — builds play-off matches from the (simulated) standings.
3. Simulate play-offs — fills in random play-off results.
4. Clear all simulated results — resets everything back to unplayed.

Tip: the simulator is meant for draft tournaments you're still setting up, not ones with real results already recorded — clearing simulated results will also clear any real ones.

Good to know

• Divisions lock outside Draft. Add division and Edit (on a division) are only available while the tournament's status is Draft. Once you move it to Open, In progress or beyond, the Settings tab labels the divisions as locked (for example, "locked while open") and the buttons are disabled — this stops the team groupings changing under fixtures and standings that are already live. If you need to restructure divisions, move the tournament back to Draft first.
• Results and standings update the public results pages automatically — nothing needs publishing separately.
• See Fixtures & scheduling if you need to move or reschedule an individual match after generating the schedule.