3 posts tagged with "Operations"

Three tournaments ran on FairGame this weekend, and between them they put 217 teams on the pitch. Fylkir's Bikarmót for 6. flokkur and Fjölnir's árgangamót both played on Saturday, and Fylkir's Bikarmót for 7. flokkur plays on Sunday.

Each one runs on a different tournament system: groups where everyone plays everyone at Fylkir on Saturday, groups followed by a knockout at Fjölnir, and a Swiss pool for Fylkir's youngest players on Sunday. All three run from the same admin app, with parents and coaches following along in the FairGame app on their phones. This is what the weekend looked like from the organizers' side of the table.

To schedule a tournament across multiple venues, first check the day fits at all — total pitch-minutes available against match-minutes required — then place fixtures so no team is ever booked in two places at once, and never expects a team to cross town between back-to-back matches.

The hard part is not the fixture list. It is the travel, the rest, and the fact that every constraint interacts with every other one.

On a busy tournament day a missing referee stops a match as surely as a missing team. With games kicking off every few minutes across a dozen pitches, keeping an official on every one is its own logistics problem.

Here is how to staff referees without gaps, avoid the conflicts that erode trust, and get scores off the pitch and onto the results page in seconds.