Here’s our new Participants Widget!

Our widget family is happy to welcome a new one today! Meet “Participants Widget” which will, as its name says, display all the participants of your tournament.

This new widget boasts some specifities:

  • It is content-only. No menus or interactions
  • Its height varies with the amount of participants
  • Single or multi columns style, depending on the chosen width
  • Team based games will show line ups
  • New unicode font, and clean design!

This widget will come very handy when you want to display your participants list on your website, in a post or embedded in a sidebar. Of course, you can fine tune the widget dimensions by editing the embed code.

The Participants Widget is available today, in the “Share” tab of your tournament dashboard. Enjoy!

Discover Toornament TV, your smart display solution!

Toornament TV, our popular public display / stream smart content, has been used to great success by some of you and requested by a lot more. After a Beta phase, Toornament TV is now available for all – and for free!

image
The LCS Worlds 2015 Toornament TV: check it live

As a reminder, here’s what you can do with Toornament TV:

  • Generate in-between matches content for your online presence (streams)
  • Help your audience and competitors get the latest, most relevant information for your offline events

With Toornament TV, you can generate a dynamic content without the need of any human intervention.

Providing an advanced tool for free consolidate our position as one of the most powerful eSport platform in the industry.

We hope you’ll enjoy and benefit from Toornament TV. You can find Toornament TV in the “Share” tab of your tournament’s dashboard. In the meantime, check this example taken from the LCS Worlds 2015 and read our complete guide.

Get “Toornament eSports”, our mobile app for your smartphone!

After several months of beta tests, we’re happy to release our free mobile app for iOS and Android. Say Hello to “Toornament eSports”!

image

 

We crafted our mobile app as the perfect companion for the Toornament website. Whereas the website is organizer orientated, the mobile app is designed towards the participants, as they can follow the tournaments they play in and get all the schedules and results directly from their mobile phone

image

 

Toornament eSports also act as a great match ticker, as our team covers the major eSport tournaments around the world so that you can get all the results, scores and statistics for your bookmark eSport disciplines. But wait, there’s more!

The Toornament eSports mobile app is an ever-evolving project and we plan on adding more features in the next months. Here are some of the next steps we’re working on:

  • Embedded streams and VODs
  • Advanced stats and datas for Dota 2, League Of Legends and Blood Bowl 2
  • Participants can login and register, to find the tournaments they’re in
  • Communication with the tournament organizer
  • Score reporting

We can’t wait to put our next releases into your hands and in the meantime, enjoy our app!

image

 

Lessons from the Beta Phase

Thanks to your feedbacks these last 18 months, Toornament has evolved into the most powerful Esport platform out there: new features, new architecture, a mobile app… and this is just the beginning!

Talking about our mobile app, we’ll have a dedicated post soon showing you what’s it’s capable of and how this major project will evolve over the next releases.

In the meatime, Here are some interesting trends spotted during the beta phase that we wanted to share with you:

Community:

  • 15,000 tournaments
  • 8,000 tournament organizers from 93 countries
  • 500,000 participants
  • 66 average participants per tournaments
  • 63% online events, 37% offline events

Top 5 games:

  • Counter Strike: Global Offensive (Valve)
  • FIFA (EA)
  • League Of Legends
  • Hearthstone (Blizzard)
  • Call Of Duty (Activision)

Most popular tournament structures:

  • Single Elimination Bracket
  • Groups to Single Elimination Bracket
  • Double Elimination Bracket

To end this little dedrief, we produced a brand new trailer, showcasing Toornament’s wide array of functionalities and features and simplified UI.

 

About Toornament from OXENT on Vimeo.

 

If you use and enjoy Toornament, share the love and share this video!

Cheers,

The Toornament team

The International 5 competition structure analysis

As The International 5 is underway, let’s talk about its complex structure and the way it handles performances, elimination and other matters.image

Let’s be honest: last year International was a mess to follow: regional qualifiers, last chance tournament, round robin, double playoff, main bracket, all intricated with one another.

For the 5th iteration of its grand tournament, Valve made things simpler, but retained the multiple phases format. Here’s our break down on these choices:

Open Qualifiers (NA, EU, CN, SEA)

image

  • Up to 1024 teams
  • Single Elimination bracket
  • Match format: Best of One
  • The winner is qualified for Main Regional Qualifier

Toornament’s notes: the first step to The International is a brutal welcome. Hundreds of opponents and no misstep allowed!

The combination of “Single elimination bracket” and “Best of 1 Matches” is really steep, but what choice do you have, when thousands of competitors around the world want and can take part in it?

This format is very time efficient, but should never be picked for any advanced stage of your competition.

Regional Qualifiers (NA, EU, CN, SEA)

image

  • 10 teams
  • Group stage : 2 groups of 5
  • Double elimination bracket: Top team of each group enters through the
  • Winner bracket, 2nd team enters the Loser bracket
  • Match format: Best of 3, except for the Finals in Best of 5
  • Winner is qualified for the Wildcard tournament.

Toornament’s Notes: Classic structure. The limited number of participants allow for a double structure format, the classic “Group to Playoff”. This allows a good amount of matches and the right balance of forgiveness when a competitor stumbles.

The only twist here is that your group performance weighs more than usual on the rest of the competition, as the 2nd ranked in the group directly goes to the Loser bracket, instead of entering the Main bracket with a low seed. This method will be used throughout the whole competition.

The Wild Card

  • 4 teams
  • Double Elimination Bracket
  • Match format: Best of 3
  • Top 2 teams advance to the Main Event
  • Bottom 2 teams are eliminated

Toornament’s notes: A small, quick competition qualifying the two last teams for the Main Event. This phase wasn’t necessary, as the organizer could just have invited 12 teams instead of 14 and qualified the 4 winners of the Regional Qualifiers.

We think it’s a good way to start the Main Event with an appetizer, and a perfect rehearsal for the admin, streaming and casting teams.

Main Event – Group Stage

  • 16 teams
  • 2 groups of 8
  • Round Robin: Everybody plays each other within a group
  • Match format: 2 games. 2-0 earns 3 points, 1-1 earns 1 point, 0-2 earns 0 points
  • The top 4 teams of each group enter the main Bracket, the Bottom 4 teams of each group enter the Loser Bracket

Toornament’s notes: This is The International specialty: a huge amount of 112 matches being played in the course of 4 days. Still, the largest phase of the competition doesn’t eliminate anyone.

The rankings it produces are purely Seed intended, as everyone will go to the next phase no matter what. Again, Valve leans toward the “top to the winner bracket, bottom to the loser bracket” method.

We thus feel that this phase is very forgiving for everyone and that the organizers want to give as much chances as possible to every participant. We wouldn’t expect less from the most anticipated Esport tournament of the year.

Main Event – Playoff

  • 16 teams
  • Double Elimination bracket
  • Match format: Best of 3, except the Grand Finals using Best of 5 and the Loser Bracket Round 1 using Best of 1

Toornament’s notes: The last phase of The International 5 follows the ever popular Double Elimination Bracket, adding two modifications to the original model: at the very end, the Grand Final is a Best of 5 match, instead of a set of Best of 3 matches, where the competitor coming from the Loser Bracket has to “reset” the Finals by winning a first Best of 3, whereas the competitor from the Winner Bracket just needs one set to win it all.

At the very beginning of the tournament, Valve has left a steep Loser Bracket 1st round for the bottom competitors. This round is played in a Best of 1 match, meaning a swift elimination for 4 of the bottom teams.

We do understand this decision – Group Stage rankings must come with a price, or no teams will be motivated to really perform, or show their strategies and best moves.

Final Wrap Up

image

The International is really one of a kind. Its much hyped, crowdfunded money prize is the talk of the town, but its competition structure is worth a look. Valve went with a very unique way to treat its competitors, going from brutal phases to more forgiving ones

The fact that all the teams play a lot of matches over an extended period says one thing for us: The International is a massive competition, but also a massive  celebration of DOTA 2 as a game, a community and an Esport discipline.

The generous amount of matches reminds us the NBA league, where the fans get plenty of show and exciting moments. The extended length of the competition – 2 weeks from the start of the Wild Card to the Finals of the Main Event – leans toward the World Cup (4 weeks), which gives time for everyone to celebrate.

As a tournament organizer, you should take notes from The International. There are great ideas (we haven’t even talked about All-star matches, 1v1, media days, days off etc.) to keep in mind, but also lessons you should take as a warning. The main one being that The International is a huge event with huge resources. Valve did a good a job to size the need for their phases, but few people and companies can afford the millions of dollars needed.

All in all, always think about your competitors and the audience experience! The right balance between the amount of matches, the timeframe and people’s endurance will be key to your success. Share with us your ideal Tournament structure and in the meantime, let’s enjoy The International 5!