How to run a tournament

Before you start

Create Brackets builds and runs a tournament: the bracket, the schedule, the public page fans follow, and the scores coming in from the gyms and fields. You enter what you decide; who plays whom is worked out from the seeds and the results, every time.

Have these ready, or add them as you go:

• The teams, best seed first. A pasted list or spreadsheet columns work.
• How it is played: single or double elimination, round robin, pools then a bracket, or a leaderboard (golf, cross country, swimming, track).
• The dates, and any neutral sites with their addresses.
• Ticket and livestream links, if you have them, and any sponsors.

Accounts and saving

With an account, everything saves online as you work, and you can publish, send score links to schools, and invite others. Without one, you can build a bracket that saves in this browser only.

• Organization: the conference, league or section you sign up as. Its name appears on your public pages.
• Saving: automatic. The rail says All changes saved. If two people edit at once, the second save asks which version to keep.
• Forgot your password: use Forgot password on the sign-in form; you will be sent a link to set a new one.

The seven steps

A tournament is built in seven steps, down the left of the screen. You can go back to any step at any time; nothing already entered is lost.

Step 1 · Setup

Name, sport, gender, level and season, the organization name fans will see, and the format.

Who hosts: by default the higher seed hosts each game unless you set a site. Choose Neutral sites only if every game is at a site you name.

Step 2 · Teams and seeds

Seed 1 is the best. The bracket follows the standard high school layout: 1 at the top, 2 at the bottom, so they can only meet in the final; 1 plays 16, 8 plays 9, and so on.

• Paste a list: one team per line, best first. "1. Randolph" and spreadsheet columns (name, seed, league) are understood.
• Group / league: used by Keep groups apart, which nudges seeds so teams from the same league don't meet in the first round.
• Random draw: new seeds for everyone, at random. For unseeded events.
• Record: shown on the public page next to the seed.
• Colours: read from each school's logo and used for the winner's bar on the bracket and on graphics. Click a swatch to change it.

Logos

Click a team's logo box. A logo is trimmed, sized and checked for colours however it arrives:

• The logo library is shared by every organization. Once anyone adds a school's logo, every tournament can use it. Match from the logo library fills in every team it can find at once.
• Find logos on a website: paste a page that shows the schools' logos, such as a conference's member schools page. The images are matched to your teams by name; tick the matches to keep.
• Teams with no logo show their initials on their own colour, so the bracket still looks finished.

Step 3 · Schedule

Give each round a name, a date, a time and, if it is at a neutral site, the site. Every game in the round uses those unless you change that one game.

• Sites: neutral sites with their addresses (fans get a Directions link). Games at a school use the school.
• Host: Auto is the higher seed; pick a team or Neutral to override.
• Games not decided yet show as "Winner of Game 17" until their teams are known.

Post once, fill down

Set one value on many games at once: a date, a time, a site, a note, a ticket or livestream link, or a game sponsor.

Step 4 · Links and sponsors

Post a ticket or livestream link once, at the level it applies. A game uses the closest one it finds, in this order: the game's own, its round's, its site's, the host school's, then the tournament's.

Sponsors

How to add a sponsor:

1. Open the tournament and go to step 4, Links & sponsors. Scroll to the Sponsors card.
2. Click + Add a sponsor. Type the sponsor's name and its website address; fans who click the logo go there.
3. Click the logo box and choose the sponsor's logo file (PNG, JPG or WebP). It is sized to fit.
4. Under Where it shows, choose Presenting (the band across the top of the page), A round (then pick the round), or Games.
5. For a game sponsor, use Post once, fill down on the same step: choose Game sponsor, the sponsor, and which games (every game, a round, a site, or a school's home games), then Fill down.
6. On Publish, click Publish changes. Sponsors appear on the public page straight away.

• Presenting: a band across the top of the public page ("Presented by").
• A round: shown with that round ("Semifinals presented by").
• Games: on the game's details; set it with Post once, fill down → Game sponsor.

Views are counted by day, with how often each presenting sponsor was seen, on the Publish step: something real to show a sponsor.

Step 5 · Info and pick'em

• About, rules, tickets, parking: plain text; a blank line starts a new paragraph.
• Contacts: name, role, email, phone.
• Pick'em: fans pick every winner before the first game; a correct pick is worth 1 point in the first round, doubling each round. A leaderboard runs next to the bracket. Picks close when the first game starts, or at the time you set.

Step 6 · Scores

Click a game to enter its score. The winner moves on by itself, everywhere: the bracket, the public page, calendars and graphics.

Step 7 · Publish

• Page address: change the end of the address to something short (it must be unique).
• Share: champion and round graphics, a PDF poster, printing and a QR code. See Posting to your socials and Save, print and embed.
• Views: page views by day and how often each sponsor was seen.

The public page

What fans see: the whole bracket on a computer, one round at a time on a phone, with the tickets and livestream for every game.

While games are being played the page checks for new scores every 45 seconds and updates by itself.

Scores from the schools

Each school gets its own private link. Whoever is at the game types the final score on a phone; no account, no app.

1. On Scores, click Make the links. Each school's link appears with a Copy button. Send each school its own.
2. After a game, the coach or athletic director opens the link, types both scores, and sends. The link only shows that school's games whose opponents are known.
3. You see the report at the top of Scores. Click Approve and it goes live, or Reject.

Posting to your socials

Every moment worth a post gets a graphic and a written caption: each round set, each round's results, every final score, the champion, and the leaderboard.

• On a phone: Share picture + caption opens the phone's share sheet with both ready: choose Instagram, Facebook, X or a text.
• On a computer: the picture saves and the caption is copied; paste both into the post.
• Post to X and Share on Facebook open a post with the caption and the bracket's address.

Save, print and embed

• Save as PDF (Publish, or the public page): an 11 × 17 poster of the whole bracket with the page's address on it. Good for the gym wall and the program.
• Print: the bracket shrunk to fit one landscape page, with no buttons.
• QR code: for posters, programs and the PA announcer; it opens the live bracket.
• Graphics: the champion, any round (set or results), and every final score, sized for Instagram, Facebook and X.

Put it on your website

Sending games to your scheduling software

Tournament games go out in the layout each system imports, so nobody types them twice. Choose the format on Publish, then CSV, Excel or a calendar file.

"Best match" means the system's template is behind its own login: check the columns against the template you download from it the first time.

Games not decided yet go in as "Winner of Game 17". Send a new file as rounds are decided, or untick Include games not decided yet.

Leaderboards

For events scored by totals instead of games: golf, cross country, swimming, track, wrestling team points.

1. Choose Leaderboard as the format. On Setup choose who wins (lowest total for golf and cross country, highest for points) and, for golf, par per round.
2. On Schedule, add a column for each round, day or event, with its date.
3. On Scores, type each team's score in each column. The leaderboard re-ranks as you type and, once published, goes live as it saves.
4. Tick Final: crown the champion when it is over.

Walkthroughs

Glossary

Bye

A free pass to the next round, given to the top seeds when the number of teams isn't a full bracket.

Seed

A team's ranking going in. 1 is the best.

Consolation

A second bracket for teams that lost early, so they play again.

Double elimination

A team is out after its second loss.

If necessary

The second final in double elimination, played only if the elimination-bracket team wins the first.

Pool

A small group that plays a round robin before the bracket.

Host

The school a game is played at; by default the higher seed.

Neutral site

A named place that isn't either team's school.

Fill down

Setting one value on many games at once.

Score link

A school's private address for reporting its scores.

Embed

Showing the live bracket inside another website.

Leaderboard

A format ranked by total score instead of games.

To par

Golf: how far a total is above (+) or below (−) par.