How many teams can your tournament accomodate?

One of the first scheduling questions that tournament organizers have to reckon with is, just how many teams should they register given the number of fields they have. The answer can be pretty straightforward, and complicated at the same time.

Let's look at a simple example where you have a 9v9 field, where games start at the top of the hour. The first game starts at 8am, and the last game needs to end by 6pm. Basically, this field can handle 10 games per day.

Minimum 3 games guaranteed
How many teams does that translate into depends on the tournament format. The most common formats we come across are - "everyone plays 4 games - 2 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday", or "everyone plays at least 3 games, with a possible 4th". Both of these formats require teams to play exactly 2 games on Saturday. The answer to our question then becomes 10 - the same as the number of games the field can accommodate in 1 day. So, if you have 10 similar fields, you can handle 100 teams.

10 teams per field is a theoretical maximum in this scenario. Should you actually register 100 teams with 10 fields? If you're creating the schedule manually, probably not. Because you will have little flexibility to accommodate coaching conflicts. (We have specialized tools available at our disposal, so can handle that fairly easily without sacrificing team comfort or coaching conflicts)

If you're curious, here's how the math works. After every game, 2 teams get to play 1 game each. After 10 games, 20 teams play 1 game each - which is the same as 10 teams get to play 2 games each. Basically the math is (10 x 2 / 2).

Exactly 3 games per team
Now let's look at the same field, but a different tournament format. Every team gets to play exactly 3 games over the weekend. With that format, as an organizer you have the flexibility to get the team to play either 2 games on Saturday or 2 on Sunday. So, this is how the math works. 10 x 2 x 2 / 3. That's 10 games per day, times 2 days, times 2 teams per game = 40 teams playing 1 game each. Since we want everyone playing 3 games each, you divide the total by 3. Since 40 / 3 = 13.3, you have to round it down to 13. Now there's another wrinkle. The total number of team games cannot be an odd number. So 13 teams cannot play exactly 3 games each (remember every game has 2 teams). You can either have 12 teams play 3 games each, or 13 teams play 3 games generally, but one of them plays a 4th game.

So, basically going from a 3 games minimum (with a possible 4th game) to exactly 3 games format, gives you the ability to handle 33% more teams at your tournament. Of course you have to balance that with the experience that your participating teams want from the tournament.