Author: ToorAdmin

Case study: A1 Gaming League

For this new Case study, we visit Bulgaria, with one of the country’s leading provider of telecommunication services and digital solutions: A1.
They approached us to build an esports platform to organize a year-long circuit of online tournaments and qualifiers, leading to offline finals during the Aniventure Comic Con, in September 2019.
To achieve this goal, we built a custom-made website based on the Toornament technology, for them to organize as many tournaments as they wanted, all in their brand design, and thus was born the A1 Gaming League Platform:

A1-home

The website has an information section and a partners showcase, but also news, livestreams, tournaments and rankings linked to the games that are part of the circuit.
The esports aspect of things is handled with the Toornament API, providing schedules, information and results directly on the website:

A1-tournament

Contact us if you wish to learn more about how we could work together on your own esports project!

The most comprehensive tournament engine

The structure is an important part of any successful tournament, an essential element that will keep the players and audience invested in the competition, through progress, twists and storytelling. And in this respect, having a choice when selecting the structure best suited to the situation is key. That is why we took on building a comprehensive tournament engine that handles a lot of different tournament structures, adjustable and complementary.
Our structures are split into two categories, the ones for Duel matches, and those designed for Free-for-all matches:

Structures for Duel matches

The Duel structures, built around matches involving two participants, are the most common, just like in regular sports. Either two players or two teams will face off, in an organized series of match, some with elimination involved, some without. There are four bracket-based structures, and three ranking-based ones available on Toornament:

  • Single or Double-Elimination Brackets, Bracket Groups and Gauntlets
  • Round-Robin Groups, Leagues and Swiss Systems

All structures come with advanced seeding options (ability to manually create matches in a league, or switch participants in a Double-Elimination loser’s bracket) and match format customization (to have your matches played in Best-of 1, semifinals in Best-of 3 and grand finals in Best-of 5 if need be).

Structures for Free-for-All matches

With the advent of the Battle Royale genre, we had to come up with solutions for organizers to smoothly organize their competitions, with tools built with this new way to compete in mind. Up to 100 players per game, matches spanning a dozen of games, results based on in-game rank and kills? All of this is covered in our FFA Structures, that come in 3 variants:

  • Simple Stage, to create matches at will, for all purposes
  • Single-Elimination FFA Bracket, built with the same logic as its Duel counterpart, but on another scale entirely
  • FFA Bracket Groups, for when you have so many players you need to have them split into groups

These structures work conjointly with an advanced match format built to accommodate the Battle Royale features, among others.

So if you plan to organize an esports event, and are looking for the best structure, here is the Structure Guide you need to read to take your pick!

Use Case: the Ubisoft Gaming League

For this new article, we decided to leave the reins of the blog to Nicolas Mivielle, Production Manager from Ubisoft Montreal, for him to tell us more about their internal competition, the Ubisoft Gaming League, that they organize regularly with the help of Toornament:

Hello, my name is Nicolas Mivielle, I have been an organizing member of the Ubisoft Gaming League (UGL) for 5 years, and we will celebrate the 6th anniversary of the competition this year.
It’s an internal association that has been created and is maintained by Ubisoft Montreal employees on their free time, with a simple objective in mind: organize competitions and video games tournaments for all Ubisoft Montreal employees.


Overwatch final with public during Season 5

We want to give the employees a sharing time and space with their colleagues (we really focus on the fun side of the competitions), but also let them discover games that may not be part of the Ubisoft catalogue. For our 5 years anniversary, we also added a new dimension to the UGL, with a partnership with a game that’s yet to be announced, with a strong esport side. We organized an internal tournament, on an Alpha version of the game, to provide the studio with feedback, and check their objectives and ambition, thanks to our huge pool of competitive players and organizers.
We hope that this kind of partnerships will develop in the future, because it was a blast organizing such a competition, and the input has been invaluable for the studio.

Since the beginning of this initiative, we have organized close to 40 tournaments that gathered several hundreds participants. We work with seasons and blocks, and try to have tournaments on as many game genres as possible (MOBA, Fighters, MMO, FPS, RTS etc.). Ubisoft Montreal graciously makes everything we need available, with a total freedom when it comes to organization and communication matters.


DOTA2 casters with prizes behind for Season 6

We finish each season with a Just Dance tournament during a summer gathering where all 3,000 employees are present, before the beginning of the next one in September.
We do use Toornament for the whole process, for both public and private tournaments of the UGL. It’s a great tool that is perfect for all of our needs. We plan on diving deeper into the advanced functionnalities of the Toornament technology, like the TV or the API, for a better integration into our website. This will allow for more visibility and a customized experience for everyone.


Just Dance grand final for the end of season 5

We will soon start the 2nd Block of our Season 6, with For Honor and Rocket League tournaments. We will also organize a “Tournament of Power” in this block, which was a new format we experimented last season, that consists of an evening with many different fighting games, and the ability to qualify on any game present before the finals.

For those that would want to learn more about our organization, or follow our public tournaments, head to the UGL Website, or the UGL Twitch Channel, where we stream all public finals.

Thank you Nicolas for the extensive presentation of the Ubisoft Gaming League, and congratulations on the great initiative!
Don’t hesitate contacting us if you are wondering how Toornament could help you build great events for your co-workers or employees!

New bracket format available: the Gauntlet

We introduced with our recent structure update the Gauntlet bracket, a format that our organizers have been asking for, and we are delivering!
A Gauntlet is a type of duel-match bracket used as final stage in a tournament, usually following a League or Swiss Stage. It is a mono-branch single-elimination bracket in which only a handful of teams will play, with an important advantage given to the highest-ranked teams from the first stage.
In fact, in this type of stage, you place participants in matches up to the grand finals, depending on their #Seed:

This format is widely used in League of Legends Asian leagues, and is gaining traction in Europe too, with this season’s French Official League planning to use it aswell.
Here is an example of this new stage in our widget: