Running a Team League Season

A team league is a season of clubs, not players. Clubs enter, you sort them into divisions, and each division plays a round robin across the season's rounds. Everything between "I want to run a season" and "round one is open with the fixtures published" lives on one page: Manage → Season. Running the rounds once they start is covered in Running Team League Rounds.

That tab only appears on a team-league season. If you can't see it, the competition isn't set up as one.

The order matters: registration comes first

The single most important thing about setting up a team league is the order, and it isn't the order you'd guess:

1. Create and publish the season. In the create wizard, set Competition Type to Team League. That is the whole setup: one choice. The season is created as a league of clubs, and the single Round Robin stage that divisions and rounds hang off is built for you, so the Season tab is ready the moment the competition exists, and the wizard takes you straight to it. (On an older season that was built by hand, the Season tab tells you if that Round Robin stage is missing.)
2. Check two registration settings (below), then open registration. Everyone registers on the season's own page: captains enter or start their clubs, players join a club or sign up as free agents. You can also add a club yourself.
3. Close registration. The field is now frozen.
4. Author your divisions: how many you need depends on how many clubs actually turned up.
5. Seed the clubs into those divisions.
6. Generate the fixtures.
7. Set your round dates and open round one.

Divisions come after registration because both of the things you'd want to decide, how many divisions there are and who is in each, depend on the size of the field. Eighteen clubs need three divisions; thirty need five. You can't author that before you know.

The Season tab lays that sequence out as five phases, top to bottom: Registration, Divisions, Schedule, In season and Wrap-up. The phase you're in is open. Finished phases fold down to one line (for example "2 divisions · every club seeded") and open again with a tap, for the changes that are still allowed. Phases still ahead say what opens them, and every control that isn't available yet says why. A link to a part of the page (from a notification, say) opens its phase for you. Once the season is running, In season opens with Needs attention, one list of everything waiting on you (late lineups, overdue drafts, disputes, ban reviews, club entries); the Season tab shows how many there are. See Running Team League Rounds. Season settings aren't a phase: they're behind Settings at the top of the tab, in every phase.

Before you open registration

Two settings decide how registration behaves, and both are easy to miss. Both are on Manage → Settings, in the Settings section. Participant Cap is always shown. Require Approval is an advanced setting: it's behind the section's Show advanced options, so open that to find it.

You can change either setting at any time, even while registration is open or the season is running (only an archived season is locked). But each one is only read at the moment an entry is made, and changing it later doesn't re-sort the entries you already have. So set both before you open registration.

Participant Cap

A new season starts with a Participant Cap of 64, and the create wizard never shows it. The cap counts every entry in the season: each club entry and each player registration takes one place, whether it's confirmed, waiting for approval or on the waitlist. Once it's full, new entries go on the waitlist, and a captain can't put a waitlisted player on their roster.

Team league seasons are big. The largest competition the platform has run was a team league, with over 300 participants. So before you open registration, raise the cap well above the number of clubs plus players you expect, or switch Participant Cap off for no limit.

If the cap fills anyway:

• Raising the cap, or switching it off, doesn't move anyone off the waitlist. You promote them yourself. For a player, open Manage → Participants, go to the Waitlist tab and press the tick (Promote to confirmed). A waitlisted club shows on the Teams tab as Waiting for approval; press Approve.
• A waitlisted club can't be approved once fixtures exist (see Generating the fixtures closes entry), so fix the cap before you generate.
• Lowering the cap never removes anyone who's already in.
• While Require Approval is on, new entries wait for your approval instead of going on the waitlist, and approving one doesn't check the cap. (A player who accepted an invitation skips approval, so the cap still applies to them.)

Require Approval

Require Approval is off by default. We recommend turning it on, so that you approve each club that enters.

• Off: every club entry and every player registration is confirmed the moment it's made. Nothing waits for you, and you get no notification when a club enters.
• On: entries wait for you. A club entry shows on the Teams tab as Waiting for approval until you press Approve or Decline…, and you're notified when a club applies. Each player's own registration waits as well, but you rarely approve players one by one: approving a club also approves every player on its roster, and Approve all… on the Teams tab does the whole season at once (see Approving clubs and their players). A captain can accept a waiting player onto their club, but can't put them in a lineup until they're approved. Placing a free agent onto a club yourself approves that player's entry at the same time. A free agent still waiting for a club is approved on Manage → Participants, by setting their Status to Confirmed.

Changing the setting later only affects new entries. Turning it on doesn't send clubs or players you've already confirmed back to waiting. Turning it off doesn't approve the entries already waiting: approve those as above.

The fighter and map pool

The season's legal fighters and maps are on Manage → Game Config. Leave fighters (or maps) empty to allow every one in the game. Every fixture drafts twelve different fighters and six different maps from the pool, so if you choose some, choose at least twelve fighters and at least six maps. A smaller pool can't be saved, because no fixture could finish its draft. Each round's bans take more fighters out, so leave room above the minimum.

Registration

The Season tab's Registration panel shows how many clubs are approved and how many are still waiting. The waiting count links straight to the Teams tab, where you approve them.

Close registration ends new applications. It does not end your queue: you can still approve a club that already applied, right up until you generate the fixtures. So closing early to freeze the field, and then working through the applications you already have, is a perfectly normal way to run it.

You can reopen registration if you close it too early. You cannot reopen it once the fixtures exist; see below. That includes the competition's general settings: turning registration back on, moving its closing date into the future, or moving its opening date into the past is refused there too.

Generating the fixtures closes registration. If registration was still on when you generated (or was set to open on a later date), it is switched off at that moment.

How clubs and players get in

While registration is open, the season's page asks every signed-in player How are you taking part? The answers are Enter a team I captain, Start a new team, Join a team in this season (the team's captain decides, or you, if the team has no captain), Join as a free agent, and, for someone who's already a member of a club in the season, Play for their club. Joining a Team League walks through it from the player's side; send confused players there.

New clubs are only ever founded this way, or by you with Add team. There is no other place to create one.

On a season that requires approval, a club entry arrives on the Teams tab Waiting for approval; press Approve. If the captain asked to be on their own roster, that seat applies the moment you approve. Under each club you'll also see who has Asked to join it, who is Waiting for a board, and any captain of the club who registered but isn't on its roster. A club below the minimum roster is marked Roster short. Join requests are the captain's call, not yours, except for a club with no captain (below).

Approving clubs and their players

Approving a club approves the players on its roster too. Everyone whose seat lands when you approve (the captain's own seat, players the captain already accepted) and everyone already on the club's roster has their own registration approved in the same step. You don't need to visit Manage → Participants for them.

Players keep joining an approved club after you approve it, and their registrations wait too. The club's row says how many (2 players on the roster waiting for approval) and has an Approve players button that approves just those.

Approve all… at the top of the Teams tab's entries does everything at once. It asks first and tells you what it will do: how many waiting clubs join, how many players on their rosters are approved with them, and how many players on already-approved clubs are approved too. When it's done, a message says how many clubs and players were approved.

What approving a club, or Approve all…, never touches:

• Waitlisted clubs. Approve all… skips them and their players. When there's room, approve one from its own row (see Participant Cap).
• Free agents and players still asking to join a club. They aren't on a roster yet. Place a free agent, or let the captain decide the request; a free agent left waiting is approved on Manage → Participants.
• Players on the waitlist, or who were declined or withdrew. Only registrations that are waiting for approval are approved.
• A finished season. In a completed, archived or cancelled season Approve all… is refused, and approving a single club needs an organizer correction first.

Approving a player doesn't use up a place: a waiting registration already counts toward the Participant Cap. Each player approved is notified once: players whose seat just landed are told they're on the roster, the club's captains are told the club is in, and everyone else gets the usual registration-approved notice.

Adding a team yourself

Add team on the Teams tab enters a club directly. Pick An existing team in this organization or A new team, and optionally search for its Captain. The entry is approved straight away.

• You don't become the club's owner. A new club's named captain owns it. With nobody named, it has no captain until a player asks to captain it (below).
• Naming a captain for an existing club is for the organization's staff only. A season organizer who isn't staff can still add the club without one.
• The captain you name gets a notification. They don't have to accept.
• Club logos are set on the club's Manage team page by its owner, its captains, or your organization's staff, so you can upload or remove one yourself. See Running a Team.

Declining an entry

A club waiting for approval has Decline… beside Approve. It asks first and tells you who hears about it: the club's captains get a notification, with your reason if you write one (only they see it). Players who asked to join that club for this season have their requests closed, and players who registered to play for it go back to the free-agent pool. An approved club isn't declined; it's withdrawn (below).

Join requests to a club with no captain

A club with no captain has nobody to answer players who ask to join it, so those requests come to you. You get a notification, and on the Teams tab the club's row lists them under Asked to join with Accept and Decline, the same buttons a captain gets. Accepting makes the player a member of the club and puts them on its roster; on an approved entry you can give them a board straight away or choose Decide later.

Captain requests

Clubs carried over from an earlier league often have nobody who can run them. A player can claim one from the season's registration card with Request to captain an existing team, which lists only clubs with no captain. The claims appear on the Teams tab under Captain requests.

Only the organization's staff can Approve or Decline one; other season organizers see the list read-only. Approving makes the player the club's captain, and its owner if it has none. A request covers the club, not one season, so the same list shows on every season's Teams tab.

Free agents

Players who chose Join as a free agent are listed under Free agents, where you Place each one onto an approved club. The player leaves the list at once and an Undo appears for a few seconds; nothing is saved, and the player isn't told, until it goes. Leaving the page or switching to another tab saves it straight away. A player waiting on a join request, waiting for a board on a club, or captaining a club in the season isn't in the pool; they're listed under that club instead. A placed player is told which team they're on, and becomes a member of it.

You can add an optional reason when you place someone (up to 500 characters), for example why they suit that club. It isn't sent with the notification. It appears under Placement history on the team's page: the season's organizers and that club's captains see every placement and its reason, a placed player sees only their own, and nobody else sees the section at all.

A free agent who is already a member of a club in the season says so under their name (Member of Silver Rooks), and if that club's entry is approved it's already picked in the row's team list. It's only a hint: you can place them on any approved club.

Divisions

A division is a tier: Legend above Hero above Bronze. Give each one a name, a colour and a position, and use the arrows to move it up or down the ladder. The order is what promotion and relegation read, so it matters; the name doesn't carry it.

Behind the scenes each division is paired with a group on the season's round-robin stage. You never have to think about that: creating, renaming and deleting a division moves the pair together. It's also why the Stages and Rounds tabs don't appear in the sidebar of a team-league season: round dates live in the round calendar on this page.

Deleting a division is refused while clubs are still in it. Move them out first. Once fixtures exist, divisions can't be added, edited or deleted, and clubs can't change division.

Seeding

Once registration is closed, the Seeding panel proposes where every approved club should start, using the previous season's final tables:

• finished in the top places → promoted a division
• finished in the bottom places → relegated a division
• anywhere else → stays
• no history here → the bottom division

How many go up and down comes from the Promoted per division and Relegated per division numbers in Season settings. The proposal also aims for the Clubs per division number: a division left short pulls a club up to fill the vacancy, and a division that's over moves its lowest club down.

Each club shows an arrow for what Apply would change, and a reason for why the proposal put it there. Change any of them with the division dropdown. The proposal is a suggestion, and nothing is written until you press Apply seeding. Applying it tells the approved clubs' captains that the divisions are set.

Your first season will put every club in the bottom division, and that's the rule, not a bug. With no previous season to read, no club has history, and a club with no history starts at the bottom. Set the ladder you want by hand; from next season on, the proposal has real results to work from.

If you came from a previous season, the panel names it and tells you how many of your clubs played there. Ties in that season's table are broken the same way as the standings, including head-to-head.

Fixtures

Each division plays a single round robin: every club meets every other club once, laid out across the season's rounds, with home and away balanced.

Before you publish, the Schedule phase previews every pairing exactly as it will be written: each division's rounds side by side, with the round dates, the clubs on each side and who has the bye. The club listed first in a pairing picks fighters first. Press a club's name above the grid (or hover a club in it) to light up its whole run. The preview is read-only; the one thing that changes it is the seeding, so Change seeding takes you back to the Divisions phase.

The preview is built to the season's Rounds setting. If the season never set one, it says Rounds: 5 (default) — set it before you publish, because publishing locks it (see below).

It also tells you exactly what you'll get per division: how many clubs, how many pairings, and whether anything gets cut:

Bronze has 8 clubs and needs 7 rounds. This season has 5, so 8 of 28 pairings will not be played.

That's the normal case for an oversized division, not an error. You have three options and the numbers are there so you can pick: accept it, raise the round count in Season settings, or move a club to a different division. A division with an odd number of clubs gives one club a bye each round; byes are shown on the schedule and score nothing.

Clubs under the roster minimum are named before you generate, and generation goes ahead anyway. A short roster is a thing to chase, not a thing to block a season on: the answer to a short club is substitutes, not exclusion.

A season needs a time zone before its fixtures can be published, because every deadline is worked out in it. If it has none, the fixtures section asks you to set it first and offers your own time zone in one click.

Round 1 starts is in the season's time zone, not your own (the field says which, e.g. "New York time"). It suggests the next midnight there that's at least a day away, so captains get a full first day for lineups and you get a day to spot a mistake before round one opens. It can't be in the past. Once round one is open the schedule can't be cleared or regenerated, so check it before you publish.

Publish schedule… asks you to confirm, and says what publishing does before you press it: when round one opens and when its lineups are due (both in the season's time zone), entry to the season closes, every approved club's captains are sent the schedule (with round one's dates and lineup deadline), and the round count locks. To lengthen the season afterwards you'd have to clear every division's fixtures first.

Generating the fixtures closes entry

The moment a season has fixtures, no further club can be admitted: not by a captain, not by you. Players can no longer ask to join a club either, and any join request still waiting is closed. That's deliberate: a club joining a division whose schedule is already published would have no fixtures to play, and every other club's schedule would be wrong.

Fixtures are cleared one division at a time, so a division that has already started is never reshuffled because another one changed. Clearing is refused once a division's fixtures have results or boards attached, and while the season is finished, cancelled or archived: a past season's schedule is its record. You can clear a division's fixtures as the competition's organizer; you don't need organization-wide permissions for it.

Admitting a late club is harder than clearing one division, because a club that has just entered has no division yet, and while any division in the season has fixtures, a new entry is refused. To take a late club you have to clear every division's fixtures, admit the club, seed it, and generate again, which is only possible before any division's fixtures have results or boards. Once play has started, a late club can't join this season.

The round calendar

Generating the fixtures also creates the rounds, dated from the Draft phase (days) and Play phase (days) in Season settings: round one starts when you say, and each round follows the last.

Those dates are a starting point, and the rows are the truth from then on. Real seasons don't run on a uniform grid: rounds flex around holidays and events, and a season will happily have an 11-day round, a 13-day round and a two-week gap over New Year. So every round's window is editable, one at a time, in the Round calendar on the Season tab. Changing the phase lengths afterwards doesn't move an existing round's dates. (Draft phase does move each round's draft and assignment deadline; see Season settings.)

When you move a round by a fortnight and want everything after it to follow, tick Shift every later round by the same amount rather than retyping four dates.

Moving a round after the schedule is out

If the round already has fixtures, its captains have already been told when it runs. So the save asks first, with the real numbers:

This moves the round window for 6 fixtures. 12 captains will be notified.

Confirming saves the change and sends the new dates, and the new lineup deadline, to exactly those captains. Cancelling changes nothing. Times in those notifications are written in the season's time zone.

Rounds open themselves at their start time, and you can open one early with Open now…. What opening does, and the rest of the round, is in Running Team League Rounds.

Withdrawing a club

If a club folds mid-season, withdraw it from the Clubs in this season list on the Season tab. The dialog lets you add an optional reason. Two things happen, and both are the point:

• every fixture it has not yet finished is awarded to its opponent as a walkover, every board of theirs that nobody has reported is cancelled, and the standings are rebuilt. A board that already has a reported result stays open: its opponent can still confirm it, and you resolve a dispute, or a result the withdrawn club reported, as on any other board. The toast tells you how many reported boards still need your decision. In the standings a walkover counts each of its six places once: a finished board keeps its result and every other place goes to the opponent, so a board confirmed later only fills one of those places and can't undo the walkover;
• results it has already played stand: the clubs that beat them keep those wins.

The second half is why withdrawal isn't the same as deleting the club: clubs that already earned a result against them shouldn't be punished for a team that left later. Each affected opponent's captains get one notice that their fixture (or fixtures) against the club is a walkover. The withdrawn club's captains aren't notified.

Withdrawal can't be undone from here. It's refused once the season is finished, and it's refused for an organizer who plays in one of the affected fixtures; another organizer has to do it. Captains can't withdraw their own club; that's yours to do.

Season settings

Open them with Settings at the top of the Season tab.

Seasons created before the end-of-day rule existed keep lineups due a number of hours after the round opens (24 by default) until you change it.

The four ban numbers are read each time a round closes. Changing them leaves bans already on the board alone; recompute a closed round's bans to apply the new numbers to it.

Promoted and Relegated also light up the promotion and relegation zones on the public standings table, so spectators can see who is going up and down. The top division shows no promotion zone and the bottom division no relegation zone, since nobody can go up from the top or down from the bottom.

Create next season

Once a season is published, Create next season from this one on the Season tab starts the next one for you. You type its Season name; the web address is made from the name, and you can change both later in the season's settings.

• Carried over: the season settings (points, rounds, phase lengths, promotion and relegation), the divisions with their names, colours and order, and the organizers who run this season. One exception: the new season's lineups are due at the end of day 1 of each round, like every new season, even if this one used hours; switch it in the new season's settings if you want hours again.
• Starts fresh: club entries (captains re-enter), along with rosters, fixtures, rounds and standings. Nothing is copied that a captain has to own.
• Not carried over: bans, including the Permanent ones. Add them again in the new season.
• Registration starts closed. Open it when you're ready, and check Require Approval and Participant Cap first (above).
• How the ladder carries: when the new season's registration closes, each returning club's promotion or relegation is proposed from how it finished in this one. Nothing is placed until you apply the proposal.
• It starts as a draft. Drafts that go 30 days without a change to their details are deleted automatically, so publish it before then; the draft's own Season tab shows the date.

A season has one next season. Once it exists, the Season tab links to it instead; to start again, delete that draft first.

Related

• Running Team League Rounds: opening and closing rounds, late lineups, overrides, disputes and bans
• Creating Competitions
• Managing Events: the Inbox and match tools
• Team Leagues (for players)
• Joining a Team League (for players)
• Playing a Team League Round (for captains and players)