The mobile app
FairGame Sports is the free public app for iOS and Android; on the home screen it is simply FairGame. It carries the same tournaments as the public results site, with the things a phone does better: notifications when something changes, a schedule that still works in a hall with no signal, and the tournament in your calendar. It runs on iPhone and iPad, and on Android phones, tablets and foldables.
Nobody needs an account. There is no sign-in, and nothing to set up beyond opening it.
Finding a tournament
On a phone, a floating bar at the bottom holds two tabs, with the search button to its right:
- Tournaments — every public tournament.
- Following — the teams you have chosen, and their next fixtures.
Settings sit in the top bar, and on the Tournaments screen so does the scanner for match cards.
The app opens on Following when a team you follow has live, upcoming or recent matches, and on Tournaments otherwise — unless you have pinned a tournament.
Inside a tournament, the sections are Info, Matches, Standings, Categories, Bracket, Teams, Updates and Map. Info holds the organizer's information pages and is where the tournament opens when there are any; otherwise it opens on Matches. Updates holds the organizer's announcements. Categories, Bracket and Map appear only when the tournament has something to put there, and Standings only when it publishes a table.
Search narrows as you go: the search button on the main screens looks across tournaments, and the one in a tournament's top bar searches its teams, venues and pitches.
Pinning a tournament
At a tournament that runs over a weekend, pin it and the app opens straight on it every time. Open the tournament and tap the pin button in its top bar (Pin tournament). The pinned tournament is also listed first under Tournaments, with a pin mark. A notification or a link you tap still takes you where it points.
One tournament is pinned at a time; pinning another replaces it. To go back to the usual start, tap the pin again (Unpin tournament), or use Start screen in Settings — it shows the pinned tournament's name with Clear beside it, or Tournament list when nothing is pinned. If the tournament is taken down, the pin clears itself.
For organizers: this is worth one line in the message you send parents before the weekend.
Following a team
Following is the point of the app. Open a team and tap Follow, and everything else follows from that: its fixtures and results collect in Following, with where it stands in its group when the tournament publishes a table, and — if notifications are on — the phone tells you when something happens.
Nothing is tied to an account, so following lives on the device. Each phone in a family follows its own team.
Push notifications
Turn notifications on in Settings with Get match notifications; the row then reads Notifications on. If the phone itself has blocked them, it reads Notifications are off — turn them on in the phone's settings. To silence one team without unfollowing it, tap Mute beside it in Following.
Five things trigger a notification, for followed teams only:
| Notification | When |
|---|---|
| Final result | A match your team played is scored. |
| New match time | A published fixture moves. |
| Match removed | A published fixture is taken off the schedule. |
| Next opponent | An adaptive round is drawn. It names both teams, the kickoff and the pitch, and goes to followers of both teams. |
| Announcement | The organizer sends one. |
Notifications follow the language chosen in the app: Icelandic gets Icelandic notifications, every other language gets English. Announcements arrive as the organizer wrote them. Notifications arrive only for published tournaments — a draft never notifies anybody, and a round drawn before the schedule is published sends no Next opponent. If a round is redrawn before its alert has gone out, the alert for the old pairing is cancelled and one for the new pairing is sent instead.
For organizers: this is why a schedule change after publishing is not silent. Moving a published match pushes New match time to every follower of both teams. See reviewing and publishing.
Offline
The schedule and standings you have already looked at are kept on the device. In a sports hall with no signal, the app opens on what it last knew rather than an error, and marks how stale it is — Updated 20 min ago — so you can tell whether to trust a score. When the connection comes back, or a notification arrives, what you have open refreshes in place.
The calendar subscription
On the Following tab, Add my teams to calendar subscribes to a calendar feed in one tap. Every fixture for every team you follow lands in the phone's own calendar and keeps itself current as the schedule changes.
This is the one to tell parents about. It is the difference between checking an app on Saturday morning and having the day already in the family calendar on Thursday.
Swiss pools in the app
In an adaptive pool, a match not yet drawn reads Opponent draw scheduled for 10:20, and Opponent draw pending once that time has passed without a draw. A team sitting a round out reads Rest round, and a wave the organizer called off reads Round abandoned.
An adaptive pool's table has a Skill column and explains why: "Teams are ranked by skill, which accounts for the strength of their opponents. The order can differ from points." A Swiss pool drawn in full up front shows an Opponents’ points column instead, its first tiebreaker after points.
Standings the app does not show
Inside a tournament, the app currently reads only the tournament-wide Publish a standings table setting, not a category's own choice. If the tournament default hides the table, the app shows no table for any category — even one set to Show standings — and a link to the standings says "This tournament is not publishing a standings table. See the matches for results." The public site does show that category's table. A category set to Hide standings stays hidden in the app as everywhere else.
iPad, tablets and foldables
On a wide window — an iPad, an Android tablet, an unfolded foldable — the bottom bar gives way to a rail down the left edge with Tournaments, Following, search, the scanner and settings, and the screens spread out instead of stretching: tournament cards in columns, Following in two columns, group tables side by side, and, where there is room, a list with the selected match or team open beside it. On an Android foldable the divider between the two sides follows the hinge. Folding, unfolding or rotating keeps you where you were.
Phones can be turned sideways too. Landscape keeps the phone layout — bottom bar, one column — but a match's details, the scoring screen and the scanner use the extra width to sit side by side.
Updating the app
When a newer version is out, the app may say so: Update available — "A newer version of FairGame is available in the App Store." (on Android, "on Google Play"), with Update now and Later. It checks at most once a day and only asks on a main screen. Later hides that version for good, and with no connection the app says nothing.
Appearance and language
Appearance in Settings is Light, Dark or System.
The app is available in eight languages: Dansk, Deutsch, English, Español, Suomi, Français, Íslenska and Italiano. The Language row in Settings shows the current language in its own name; tap it to pick another from the list. On iPhone and iPad the app starts in English until you choose. On Android it starts in the phone's language when that is one of the eight, and in English otherwise. The public site also comes in Norsk and Svenska; the app does not yet.
Scanning a match card
The app can scan the QR code on a printed match card: tap the scan button (Scan game card) on the Tournaments screen and point the camera at the code. Scanning opens the scoring screen for that match. Without a camera, or with camera access turned off, paste the card's link instead.