PT 1 Life Cycle of Tournaments: Planning

Planning:

At the end of this series, you will have all of the knowledge I have gained over 5 years of running tournaments in Esports. I do plan on creating video content for this topic as it is very dense, but in the mean time, you have a written record.

My goal for this article series is to discuss various parts of the tournament process in depth for those wanting to host tournaments, play in tournaments, or sponsor tournaments. Feel free to hop around the article using the table of contents and ask questions in the comments.

Point of view note: this overview is written from the tournament administrator's viewpoint. My insight will be slightly different than someone in production or as a tournament platform provider. My background is also primarily with OW, RL, Valorant, COD, LOL, and Apex.

Part one: Planning (this Article)

Part two: Rule Set and staff definition

Part three: Monetization, Streaming, and Gameday

Feel free to use the Table of Contents to jump to specific sections.

Table of Contents

• Overview

• Who

• What

• When

• Where

• Why

• Game title TOS

It's essential to break down your tournament with obvious goals from the beginning. Esport tournaments are a huge market and your goals will narrow your focus. Use the trusted 5 w's to scope the tournament: Who, What, When, Where, Why. You do not have to complete them in any particular order.

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Who:

• Who is your target audience for players and spectators?

  • Focus on the subpopulation/segmentation.

  • Do you want to attract collegiate players or amateur teams? Only players from specific ranks can compete. Maybe you are after professional and semi-professionals who placed in the top 16, 32, or 64 previously. Additionally, you can focus on segmenting the tournament to only allow femme, BIPOC, or other important groups.

  • Most importantly, how will you verify their identity? For game-related information, request previous competitive ranks or websites that track player information. For personal identity, you will need to consider how is their personal data being stored and how serious you want the verification process to be. A rule of thumb I like to follow is the larger the prize pool, the stricter the personal identity verification process. Regardless of the size of the prize pool, game identity verification is strictly enforced to ensure fair competition.

  • Will you have open registration for teams, or will this be invitational only? This is tightly connected to your segmentation/subpopulation. Additionally, is this only for existing teams, or will you be allowing free agents (players without teams) to join? Will the structure of your tournament even include teams?

  • For example, I have seen Shenandoah University host a Smash Bros Open competition for veterans, college students, and teenagers who have lost a military parent.

• Who is running the tournament?

  • This is your staff that will be operating the tournament. Many tournaments in their first season are run with volunteers or run with a very small budget. To see an overview of the roles and what they do, check out the chart below.

  • If you are new to your role in tournaments and want more experience, consider joining an established provider to learn the ropes. This is a great way to try out a few different positions and to additionally learn how experienced people troubleshoot during live events.

  • Even if you are established in tournaments, partnering with an organization in a new game title is a great way to learn the intricacies of that particular game and its players.

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What:

• What game title is the tournament focusing on?

  • Keeping your experiences in mind, what game title do you want the players to compete in? It's vitally important that you understand the game title, and what players will expect in tournament conditions. It does help if you have competed or have staff that has experience running tournaments.

• What type of brackets will the tournament progress through:

  • There are several types of brackets and each has pros/cons. Bracket styles are independent of the number of maps a team competes with another team.

  • Some providers chose to mimic bracket styles that professional leagues use.

Single Eliminations (SE)

Single Eliminations (SE): once a team loses its matches, they are removed from the competitive bracket.

• Single Eliminations are great when you don't have a lot of time or teams.

• SE brackets aren't always appreciated by players because you can be mismatched early in the bracket and thrown out.

Double elimination (DE)

Double elimination (DE): Once a team loses its match, the loser progresses to the losers bracket (or lower) and competes with other losers. Once a team loses twice, they are removed from the bracket.

• Double eliminations are great when you have a longer time to compete and you want teams to have multiple chances to stay in the competition.

• DE brackets will take twice or three times as long as SE brackets to complete. Sometimes one side of the bracket (winners/uppers or losers/lower) will have to wait for matches to be completed from the other side.

Round Robin (RR)

Round Robin (RR): Teams compete against all teams in the tournament, accruing points for wins, ties, and losses. The team with the most points at the end of all rounds is the winner.

• Round Robin is great when you have a small pool of contestants and you want to give everyone multiple chances to compete
  

• RR can easily become unbalanced if one team is much stronger than the other teams. RR competitions can also be time-consuming with more than 5 teams and should be reserved for multiday events or leagues.

Swiss-system bracket (Swiss)

Swiss-system bracket (Swiss): this bracket system is a modified round-robin with a fixed number of rounds. Teams do not compete with every team but are often seeded so that teams only compete with similarly skilled teams.

• Swiss Brackets are great for longer tournaments, including leagues. Often, teams compete until a top 8 or a top 16 is established and the bracket shifts to a SE or DE format.
  

• Swiss brackets are sometimes cited as unfair because every team does not compete prior to the cut-off mark. Tournament organizers try to ensure fairness by seeding brackets.

• How many matches will your teams compete against each other at any given time for their show-matches? Best-of and First-to are the most popular options. Remember that tournament providers use these terms interchangeably and often incorrectly. It may be useful to provide an example in your rule book. Additionally, providers will change the numbers depending on where in the bracket you are to achieve the best competitive environment.

First To #

Many tournaments label their bracket best-of-# for their brackets but actually are run as a first-to-# in practically.

• First-to-# (Ft#) show-matches mean that the teams stop competing once one team scores the minimum required score. Ft3 means once a team scores 3 maps, the show-match ends.

• They may do Ft3 for upper, Ft2 for lower, and Ft5 for grand finals.

Best Of #

Best-of-# (Bo#) actually means that teams play the total number of show matches, regardless of the running score. These scores are added to the team's overall progression. True Bo# are normally reserved for leagues.

• Bo5 means the teams play all 5 games.

• Similarly, they may be Bo3 for upper, Bo1 for lower, and Bo5 for semi-grandfinals.

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When:

• When do you want your tournament to happen?

  • To ensure success for your tournament, Be sure to research the game title to see overlapping events, such as pro leagues, other popular tournaments, and holidays. The less competition, the better for your event.

  • When do existing tournaments happen? Note what time frame and days existing tournaments happen. This is probably for a good reason and will be times when your players will expect competitions to happen.

• What time structure is your tournament?

  • Is this a single event, a multi-day event, or a league? This decision is based on your staff availability and budget.

• Do you plan to do only a single tournament or multiple tournaments in the future (an event vs a brand)?

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Where:

• This may be obvious, but where is your event being held?

  • Online, LAN events and hybrid are all options that you can choose from. For budget reasons, online is the easiest way to start but be sure to segment regionally if required. A common segmentation for North America (NA) is NA-only teams playing on central servers.

• In addition to hosting the competitive portion, you also need to think about where are you hosting the infrastructure of the event.

  • Registration can be on a simple google sheet or a tournament platform website. Google sheets allow you to ask very specific questions, and provide your players to upload proof of their personal and competitive identity. Tournament platforms may not give you the same flexibility in questions, but they often will host the bracket and scoring. Providers can do registration on their own and brackets on a website or vice versa.

  • Bracket infrastructure can be daunting if you've never made a custom bracket before. I suggest you use Challonge.com, start.gg, rivalgames.com, battlefy.com, or defensegaming.com and see which matches your needs the best.

  • Don't underestimate the community you are also building:

    • Keep in mind where you are housing the teams and people when they are not competing. Make sure you have a discord and a Twitter, both are essential for esport organizations. Twitch and Youtube are bonuses if you have a production team.

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Why:

• What is your goal with this event?

  • I may have listed this last, but "Why" really should fuel your answers for everything. State your goal in one or two sentences and keep that somewhere you can refer to.

    • Example goals:

      • I want to run a femme-only Valorant league.

      • This tournament will raise $1000 for Ukraine Relief.

      • This will be the first LAN event in my area.

      • I want my players to enjoy the competition

  • Knowing where you want to go will make it easier to figure out how to get there. If you haven't already made a goal, make one now, and add more details to the previous topics to guarantee your goal.

  • Define metrics (numbers) that you can track/enforce to monitor your success.

    • Examples:

      • Did you have 10 teams sign up last night? Let's shoot for 15 teams this time.

      • Did we have 80 viewers on stream? Let's shoot for 150.

      • Our marketing team needs to post a minimum of 10 times prior to our first day.

  • Common metrics include:

    • Twitch viewership, follower, subscriber, donation;

    • Discord membership,

    • Twitter engagement, click, like, and retweet;

    • Youtube watch time, subscribers, like,

    • Team/player registration, attendance, enjoyment

    • Money secured from sponsorships or raised for charity

  • Track all of the metrics in one place and monitor them as they change over time. This allows you to see if your proposed goals are met and allow you to see what actions of your staff caused the biggest moves.

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Game Title Terms of Service Considerations:

Each game studio has its own TOS that tournament providers must navigate when building out their ruleset. Some common terms involve requiring a tournament permit/license, streaming and sponsorship considerations, and prize pool amounts. For the most up-to-date information, I have included a few TOS links.

1. Blizzard - All titles except OW Community Competition

2. Blizzard- OW and OW2

3. Riot LOL - Na Tournament

4. Riot Valorant - Additional Val information

5. Psyonix Rocket League - Notably no entry fees

6. EA - Apex

7. Nintendo: Be careful with Nintendo IP

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Want to learn more about tournaments?

Part one: Planning (this Article)

Part two: Rule Set and staff definition

Part three: Monetization, Streaming, and Gameday