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How to organize a sports tournament

Six steps, no paper bracket. This guide covers everything you need to run a tournament — petanque, football, table tennis, or any other sport — from the first sign-up to the final winner.

1. Choose the format

Solo or as a team? How many stations available (courts, tables, mats)? Those two questions decide everything else: how many pools, how long the day runs, and how to split players up.

2. Open sign-ups

Forget the sheet passed around. A link or a QR code at the entrance is enough: each player signs up from their phone, no account needed. You watch the list fill up in real time.

3. Draw the pools

The draw needs to be balanced — otherwise one pool ends up with all the regulars and the other with all the beginners. An automatic draw fixes that in one click, and removes any suspicion of favoritism.

4. Play the pool stage

Each pool plays round-robin: everyone faces everyone. It's the longest part of the day, and the most frustrating to manage by hand — who's played who, which station is free. An automatic alert on each player's phone the moment their station opens up saves the back-and-forth.

5. Start the knockout bracket

The best of each pool move into a knockout bracket: it narrows down every round until the final. Enjoy a bracket that updates itself instead of redrawing it by hand between rounds.

6. Share the results

Once the tournament is over, the winner needs to live on somewhere — not just in the memory of whoever was there. Season standings that build from one edition to the next give people a real reason to come back next time.