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!

The Toornament API now has Webhooks!

We are excited to announce that Webhooks are now part of the Toornament API! Webhooks are a way for two applications to quickly and easily communicate with one another. Think of it as a ‘reverse API’, our Webhooks will let your application know that something happened in one of your tournaments, without the need for you to monitor everything at all times.

Our current set of webhooks, bound to be expanded, covers the whole spectrum of participant actions, from the registration to the check-in, so that you get notified whenever a participant performs an action in one of your tournaments, so you can automatically act upon it, or receive a notification, or build anything you want, really!

For example, imagine you want to send newly-registered players a customized email, thanks to the registration.created Webhook, you will receive a notification when a new registration is created in your tournament, and you will be able to configure any reaction you want to it, including custom emails!

This is a huge step to leverage the Toornament technology and to develop your own platforms (such as the French League of Legends official league or the Splatoon 2 tournaments website)!

You can find more about our Webhooks in our Developer Documentation, and don’t hesitate contacting us for questions and business inquiries!

Case study: Introducing the new Splatoon 2 tournaments website

Attention, Inklings and Octolings! Whether you’re just starting to dip your tentacles into the world of Splatoon 2 tournaments, or even if you’re a certified splatter, check out the brand new Splatoon 2 tournaments website!

We are proud to be the technical solution Nintendo has chosen to build their platform on, using our Toornament technology and API.

With this new online community, you can assemble your own teams, recruit new members and join regular online tournaments – for fun, or for glory! Don’t have any teammates in mind? Simply sign up, head to the “Find a Team” section and you’ll be teamed up with similar solo splatters.

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and claim your turf!
And if you are an organizer, do Contact Us if you are interested in having your own esports platform!

Are mobile esports the new/next big thing?

The backlash that Blizzard endured after their Diablo Immortal announcement fueled the never-ending debate about mobile gaming, and as an extension of it, mobile esports. We have witnessed the birth and rise of the mobile platform as a serious contender in esports events, even though it is still considered as inferior by many. But nowadays, those mobile devices that follow us along everywhere we go are pure technology condensed, and video game editors would be foolish not to make good use of this new platform.
Especially considering that mobile gaming now represents the majority of the global video games market, with 51% of the expected $137.9 Bn to be made in 2018 (Source: Newzoo).

We have seen games adapted to fit the phones, with Fortnite, PUBG and Hearthstone coming to mind immediately, and some native mobile games like Clash Royale grab a fair share of the attention lately, with online tournaments, official pro circuits and LAN events offering cash prizes that have nothing to be ashamed of in comparison to some of the big names of the industry.

ESWC PGW 2018 – Samsung Fortnite Mobile Tournament

And it’s not just about the professionals, these games present the huge advantage of being easily available, and playable by everyone, so there is no wonder that they represent a non-negligible part of the community tournaments organized this year. Fortnite, of course, leads the way, and its cross-platform gameplay makes it difficult to exactly know the portion of players enjoying the game on a mobile device, but things get clearer when you look at PUBG Mobile and Clash Royale, two games that are exclusive to mobile, and that have seen an incredible rise in numbers this year (on Toornament, PUBG Mobile went from not existing to Top 2 in just 6 months, only outdistanced by Fortnite!).

So that would be an understatement to say that we do believe in mobile gaming and mobile esports, given that ultimately, the players are the one making the calls, and it’s pretty obvious that the platform matters less than the quality of the game!

Use Case: Riot Games organizes the French Collegiate League with Toornament!

Riot Games is launching La Grosse Ligue (the Big League), the French League of Legends Collegiate League.
The League is built around the 12 French regions, with three tournaments per region, where teams are seeded based on their in-game rank. Each of the three Tiers (Baron, Dragon and Herald) boasts a different structure, that also depends on the number of participating teams in the region.

Here are all of the Grosse Ligue tournaments:

To accomplish this, Riot Games chose to trust Toornament for our wide array of structures, and flexibility of our points system to accommodate their specific rules. We built a custom registration tool for teams to apply and provide scholarship certification, and more than 500 teams across the country answered the call. The teams were then imported in their respective tournaments using the Toornament API.

Thanks to the integration with the League of Legends Tournament Codes, the matches can now be played seamlessly by the players, with results automatically reported to the platform.

Our goal at Riot Games France is to create local solutions that resonate with the French audience, and given France’s complex tertiary educational system, we needed to create a highly modular and flexible tournament system to answer those needs. We entered into the production stage with some trepidation, as we believed that implementing the format was not something that was easy to solve.
However, Toornament was able to provide the perfect product that we were looking for to create an amazing tournament experience for French university students.

– Howon Lee, Esports Lead at Riot Games

The first matches were held on the 7th of November, and the League is bound to last several weeks, where the competition will move to the national level, with the best teams competing for prizes against the best teams from the other regions.

Here is the trailer for the competition:

Find all results on Toornament, and on the Grosse Ligue official website!