Sign in
For organisers

How a tournament comes together

From the first idea to the final whistle in nine steps - all on one platform, all from your browser. Building is free, your tournament stays private until you publish it, and the invoice comes only after the games have been played.

1

Create your account and tournament

Start with the basics: tournament name, dates, venue and your organising club. That is enough - the tournament exists, and it is visible only to you while you build.

Good to know: nothing you do here costs anything, and nothing is public yet. Experiment freely.
2

Define your competitions

A tournament is a collection of competitions - one for each age group and level you want to run. For every competition you decide:

  • Birth year and gender (P2015, T2014, mixed...)
  • Level - competitive, challenge or open
  • Team size (5v5, 8v8, 11v11) and playing time
  • Minimum and maximum games per team, and the maximum number of teams
  • The participation fee - each competition can have its own
Possibilities: run two competitions for the same age group at different levels, a girls’ and boys’ series side by side, or a single-division mini tournament - any shape works.
3

Open registration

Two routes, and you can use both at once:

  • Invitations - send clubs a personal invitation link by email; their answer connects straight to your tournament
  • Open registration - share one public link anywhere; anyone can register their team

Applications collect automatically - and the invitations themselves can go out automatically too, in rounds on a schedule you set. Every applicant gets a confirmation email with their personal application link, which they can use later to add more teams to the same application - no duplicate paperwork for anyone.

4

Place the teams and build the groups

As applications arrive you place each team into its competition and form the groups. You control the rules of the competition:

  • Group sizes and how many advance
  • Points and tie-breaker rules
  • The finishing structure - placement rounds, semi-finals, bronze games and finals, or a pure group stage
  • Final positioning rules - how the overall tournament placements are decided from group finishes and placement games
  • Competitions with no groups at all - a pool of teams who each play a set number of games
5

Schedule the games

Lay out your rounds, pitches and kick-off times, and let tourno generate the games from your group setup. Reschedules are painless - change a time or a pitch and every page shows the update immediately.

A competition without groups is scheduled the same way. Say how many games each team should play - or ask for a full round robin - and tourno draws the fixtures, keeping teams from the same club apart and making sure the same two teams do not meet twice while anyone else is still free.

Build it all up front: the entire tournament can be scheduled before a single ball is kicked - knockout games that take their teams from group positions (“winner of Group A vs runner-up of Group B”), games that depend on other games (“winner of semi-final 1”), even entire second-phase groups formed from the results of the first ones. On matchday, the bracket fills itself in as the results arrive.
Nothing is set in stone: a game can be moved out of its group, or into one that holds both of its teams, at any point - even after it has been played. The tables it leaves and joins are both recalculated, so the standings stay right.
6

Prepare the matchday

The details that make the weekend run smoothly:

  • An info page for practical matters - parking, cafeteria, ceremonies
  • Rules as a PDF and a map link to the venue
  • Sponsor logos on the tournament pages
  • Referees assigned to games and pitches
  • Moderators named - the people who will update scores at the pitches
7

Publish

When everything looks right, you make the tournament public. The pages open to the world: live group tables, full schedules, a page for every team and every game, and the Tourno Assistant answering visitors’ questions in Finnish, Swedish and English. One link serves everyone.

8

Run the matchday

On the day, the platform does the running around for you:

  • Check teams in as they arrive - see instantly who is still missing
  • Moderators update scores pitchside from their phones - start, finish, penalties, corrections
  • The Matchday board rotates live standings and results on the venue TVs
  • Players and parents follow everything live from the stands - no app, no accounts
  • The Tourno Assistant answers everyone’s questions right on the pages - “when do we play next?”, “where can we park?” - in three languages, all day long
9

Wrap up

Final whistles blow, the last tables lock, and the results stay online for everyone to revisit. Team payments can be recorded and invoiced through tourno with email reminders. And tourno’s own invoice? It arrives by email after the tournament: 8€ per participating team - nothing more.

And if the tournament never happens? Then nobody owes anything. Building is always free.

What you set up along the way

Each of these has its own screen, and none of them has to be finished before you move on. Set what you know now, come back to the rest.

Rules and settings

How a group is ordered, and what happens when the last whistle goes.

  • Points for a win, a draw and a loss - your numbers, not ours
  • The tie-breakers that separate level teams, in the order you want them applied: head-to-head result, goal difference, goals scored
  • Or place the teams by hand and lock the group - no rule overrides you after that
  • Lock a group by itself once its last game is finished, so a late correction cannot move a team that has already collected its medal

Competitions

The age groups and series teams sign up to. A tournament can run as many as you like, side by side.

  • Birth year, gender, level, team size and playing time
  • Minimum and maximum games per team, and a cap on teams - or no cap at all
  • Its own teams, groups, rounds, games and final placements

Pitches

Name your pitches the way the venue names them, and the day lays itself out across them.

  • Add as many pitches as you play on
  • The pitch plan shows the whole day, pitch by pitch, so you can see the gaps and the clashes
  • Move a game to another pitch and every page follows - no reprinting

Referees

Keep the referee list with the tournament, and put names against games.

  • Name, email and phone for each referee
  • Assign them to games on a plan that shows the day at a glance
  • The referee appears on the game, so nobody has to ask who has the next one

Pricing

What a team pays you, and the details that go on the invoice.

  • Who is paid, and the account number the invoice carries
  • A standard price per team and a due date, used unless you say otherwise
  • A different price for any competition - or free of charge
  • Your own club’s teams free, with one switch

Discounts

Reward the clubs who answer early, or the ones who bring four teams.

  • A percentage off, under a name you choose
  • A start and an end date - early birds get it, latecomers do not, without you watching the calendar
  • Applied across the tournament, so one offer covers every age group you run
  • The message you write shows on the invitation and on the application form, so clubs see what they are getting

Invitations

Ask the clubs you want, in your own words, and let the sending look after itself.

  • Choose which competitions an invitation is for
  • Your own subject and text, with the pricing and your footer included if you want them
  • Send in rounds on a schedule - weekly or monthly, on the days and at the time you set
  • Later rounds can go only to the clubs who have not answered yet
  • Import and export your contact list, and see any address that bounced rather than wondering

Applications

Everything that comes back, in one place, from first reply to final payment.

  • New, accepted, waiting and rejected teams, each in its own list
  • Accept a team into its competition, or hold it while you decide
  • Invoice, remind and mark as paid - one team at a time or the whole list at once
  • Filter for who has been invoiced and who is overdue

Communications

One email to everyone who is coming, without exporting a single address.

  • Pick recipients from the teams and contacts already in your tournament
  • Write it, preview it, save it, send it
  • Replies come back to the address you nominate
  • Everything you have sent is kept, so you can see what went to whom and when

Sponsors

The people who paid for the pitches, in front of everyone who visits.

  • A logo and a link, with the sponsor’s own name beside it if you want
  • Across the whole tournament, or only on chosen competitions or chosen pitches
  • Shown on the public pages, where the parents already are

The big screen

A board for the hall or the cafeteria that keeps itself up to date.

  • Choose which competitions it shows
  • Columns and rows to suit the screen you are putting it on
  • Scrolls on its own, at the speed you set
  • Refreshes itself, so the table on the wall matches the one on the pitch

Build the whole thing before a ball is kicked

Not just the group games - the quarter-finals, the bronze game, the final, and the shootout that might decide it. All of it can exist weeks ahead, before you know a single name that will fill it. On the day nobody is inventing anything; the tournament simply plays itself out.

Groups, and groups made from groups

A regular group is the one you draw teams into. A generated group is built from the finishing positions of groups that have already been locked.

  • The winners of A, B, C and D become a group of their own - set up now, filled in when the groups finish
  • A generated group behaves like any other: it has its own table, its own games, and its own positions
  • Games can be built from positions inside it too, so a third phase can sit behind the second
  • Which means the whole shape of the weekend exists before anybody has kicked off

Every game knows what it is

A game carries its stage, and the stage is what tells a parent whether they are watching the last group game or the final:

  • Group
  • Placement
  • Quarter-final
  • Semi-final
  • 🥉 Bronze
  • 🥇/🥈 Final
  • Games can be created between positions rather than teams - “winner of quarter-final 1” - so the bracket is real before the names are
  • As each result comes in, the names drop into the games that were waiting for them
  • The stage shows on the schedule, the team pages and the board in the hall

Shootouts, settled in advance

A knockout game that ends level has to be decided somehow, and you decide how when you create it - not at the pitch with two coaches watching.

  • Each game is set to no penalties, or to between one and five kicks a side
  • The shootout is only offered to the moderator if the game is actually level at full time
  • Kicks are recorded one at a time, and the pages show them landing live - scored, missed, still to come
  • The level score stays the level score, and the shootout decides who goes through to the next game

Ready to build yours?

Create an account and walk through these steps with your own tournament - private until you say otherwise.

Get started

See what tourno can do · Read the FAQ