This is the end-to-end playbook for running a competition on Competree — creating it, filling it with teams, choosing a format, playing the matches, closing it, and running it again next season. Along the way we flag the edge cases that trip organizers up.
1. Before you start
You need an organizer account (email/password or Google). Teams and spectators don't — they only need a link. Have your basics ready: the sport, the start and end dates, and roughly how many teams you expect. Nothing here is final; you can change it later.
2. Create the competition
From your dashboard, choose New competition and fill the form: name, sport and dates, plus an optional logo, cover image, venue, prize and description. Then set the visibility and your limits.
- •Visibility — public (listed in Discover, any team can join) or private (only your link works).
- •Team limit — the maximum number of teams accepted.
- •Player limits — the minimum and maximum roster size per team.
- •Registration deadline — after which sign-ups close automatically.
Edge case — the end date must fall within 12 months of payment. One competition covers one edition of up to a year; anything longer is a new edition (and a new payment).
3. Pay for the edition
Creating a competition takes one payment, which opens the first edition. The payment is single-use, so one payment can only ever create one competition — it can't be reused. Everything else in this guide is included at no extra cost.
4. Add teams
You have two ways to fill the competition, and you can mix them:
- •Add teams yourself — they're approved immediately.
- •Share the registration link — teams sign up with their roster and stay pending until you approve them.
The app enforces your rules as teams come in: team names and contact emails must be unique, rosters must respect the min/max player counts, and registration closes automatically once the team limit is reached, the deadline passes, the competition is full, or it's finished — the public link then shows exactly why (deadline, full, or finished).
5. Choose a format
- •Direct matches — a simple schedule of fixtures, no groups.
- •Pools — a group stage; teams are split into pools that each play a mini-league with live standings.
- •Knockout — a single-elimination bracket to a final.
- •Pools + knockout — a group stage whose top teams qualify for a final bracket.
Only approved teams are placed, so approve your teams before generating pools or a bracket. You can start with pools and add a bracket later.
6. Build the schedule
For direct matches, add fixtures by hand (two approved teams and a date inside the competition) or generate them automatically as one random round or a full round robin. For pools, generate each pool's round-robin fixtures. For a bracket, seed it from approved teams or from pool qualifiers and the rounds are laid out for you.
Regenerating never deletes played matches — results are always kept. In a bracket, a non-power-of-two team count gives the top seeds a bye (a free pass to the next round), and knockout matches can't end in a draw, so enter a decisive score.
7. Launch
When you're ready, Launch moves the competition from draft to live. It needs at least two approved teams and at least one fixture. Launching publishes the public page; teams and spectators follow it without an account, and contact emails are never shown.
8. Record results
Open any match and enter both scores. The winner is computed automatically, and the standings, the public page, your visuals and — in a bracket — the next round all update instantly.
Identity lock — the moment the first result is recorded, the name, sport and dates freeze. Everything else stays editable. This stops a running competition from quietly becoming a different one.
9. The editing window
While the edition is open you can change almost anything, even after launch. The edition closes at the earliest of: 7 days after you mark it finished, 7 days after its end date, or 12 months after payment. During those final 7 days — the grace period — you can still correct results, and a banner shows the exact closing date.
Once closed, the edition is read-only: every change is refused, while the results stay public forever.
10. Finish the competition
When it's over, mark it finished. That starts the 7-day grace period for last corrections. After that the edition locks and moves to your archive.
11. Run it again next season
To play the same competition again, start a new edition. This takes a new payment and then archives the finished edition as a read-only snapshot in Editions, clears matches, pools and results, lets you keep the teams (re-approved) or start empty, and sends the competition back to setup with its new dates.
Why per edition? Charging once a year would let a single payment cover many events. Per-edition billing, the identity lock and the closing window keep the price matched to the value.
Common edge cases at a glance
- •Registration won't open — the deadline passed, the competition is full, or it's finished.
- •Can't edit the name/sport/dates — a result has been recorded (identity lock).
- •Every change is refused — the edition is closed; start a new edition.
- •A generated schedule skipped some pairings — played matches are preserved and never overwritten.
- •Deleting a team also removes that team's matches, everywhere.
- •A bracket team advanced for free — that's a bye, used when the team count isn't a power of two.
That's the whole lifecycle. Each step above has its own deep-dive article if you want more detail.