Count on capacity in your tournament

When arranging a tournament, you often want to get a feel early on for how the number of teams affects how many pitches you can have. At Cup Manager, we often help tournaments reason about how many teams they should accommodate, or if they should try to try to get hold of multiple pitches.

Here we would like to share some tips on how to think when calculating capacity in your tournament. 

At the bottom, we have also built a calculator to help you calculate your own tournament.

Go directly to the calculator

Let's get started! 

How many matches will there be in my tournament?

Assuming that all your groups are the same size, you know that each hold plays once against all opponents in the group. As we can see in the picture, each hold will play 3 matches in a 4-holds group.

The diagram includes four groups labeled as Grupp A, Lag A, Lag B, Lag C, and Lag D. The style of the diagram is described as a sketch with a white background and font design.

4 teams playing 3 games each? Then it is easy to believe that the total number of matches must be 3 * 4 = 12 matches ? But that is not true. Check again the number of lines/arcs in the image above. 12 is the number of times that any team appears in any match, but since there are two teams in each match, there will be half as many matches, i.e. 6 matches .

The image is a diagram with text arranged in a specific pattern. The text includes the letters A, B, C, and D, along with mathematical operations like subtraction and division. The layout is organized in rows and columns.

So there will be 6 matches in a four-team group:

The image is a table with 4 rows and 3 columns. Each row represents a "hold" and each column represents a "matcher per hold." There are 2 "hold" in each match, resulting in a total of 6 matches. The table has a white background with black text and lines separating the rows and columns.

More generally, you can say that the total number of matches is:

The image is a table with the content "antal hold * matcher per hold" and the number "2". The table is displaying information about the number of matches per team.

And the same formula can be used to calculate an entire tournament. For example, if you plan to have 200 teams in your tournament and everyone will play 3 matches (e.g. if you have 4-team groups), then there will be 300 matches.

The image is a a shape with dimensions of 200 hold by 3, resulting in 300 matchers. The content also mentions the number 2.

Feel free to try inserting your own numbers.

If you have different sized groups in different classes or other variations, you have to calculate each part separately and then add it up. For example, if you have 50 teams in five-team groups (4 matches per team) and 28 teams in four-team groups (3 matches per team), you can easily calculate the number of matches similar to the above.

The image contains a mathematical calculation showing 50 hold multiplied by 4, added to 28 hold multiplied by 3, resulting in 142 matcher. The image includes text written in a white handwritten font with a line and typography elements.

But the playoffs then?

Yes, to calculate how many matches there are in a playoff, you can start with an insight: in a playoff tree, exactly one hold goes out in each match, and at the end, there is one hold left as the winner of the final. So the number of matches must be the same as the number of hold that enter the playoff, minus one. As an example, we can have a playoff that starts with quarterfinals. Then there are 8 hold that enter, and one hold that remains as the winner. Seven hold thus go out and so there are seven matches in the playoff tree.

The image is a schematic diagram showing a structure with 8 teams entering. The diagram includes information about which teams win and lose, as well as the matchups leading to 7 teams being eliminated after 7 matches.

This rule works even if the endgame tree is not "even" or balanced.
If you also have a bronze medal match in your playoff, there will of course be an extra match, i.e. as many matches as teams. If you have placement matches for all teams, then it's a bit more complicated.

Example: If we have 6 age groups with both A and B playoffs, we have 12 playoffs. If all 200 hold in our tournament advance to either A or B playoffs, the total number of playoff matches will be:

The content involves a mathematical calculation. The image contains text that states "200 hold - 12 hold vinner finalen = 188 matcher."

In our fictitious tournament, we thus have 300 group stage matches + 188 playoff matches = 488 matches in total. 

Time

To take the next step to calculating time consumption, we need to know how long each match takes. A match has a length, e.g. 2×15 minutes, but also a break before the next match starts, e.g. 2 minutes. This means that the matches start 32 minutes apart.

The image is a diagram showing different time intervals in minutes: 2 minutes, 2 times 15 minutes, and 32 minutes. The number 4111 is also included in the content.

By multiplying the match interval by the number of matches, we can calculate that the total time required for the tournament is:

The image is a diagram showing a calculation involving the duration of 488 matches, each lasting 32 minutes. The result of this calculation is approximately 260 hours.

of which 160 hours group games and 100 hours playoffs.

Plans

Based on this, we can calculate how many plans we need depending on when we start in the morning and end in the evening.

 For example, if we are to play the entire group stage from 08:00 to 20:00 during one day, this means that we have 12 hours per field. Then we can easily calculate how many plans are required by taking the total time consumption and dividing by the number of hours we have per plan.

Rounded up, there are therefore 14 plans.

The same can be done for the playoffs.

However, it should be remembered that this gives us the minimum number of plans, assuming that all matches can be compressed completely and there will be no holes in the schedule at all. In practice, it is rarely possible to pack 100%, especially not in the playoffs where the matches are dependent on previous matches.

Below we have an interactive tool that allows you to calculate your own tournament.

Cupkalkylator

First a little about your tournament

Number of groups: ~13
Playoffs
Total number of matches: 113 ( 75 in group games and 38 in playoffs)
(we assume here that all teams advance to the playoffs, and that there is no bronze medal match or other placement matches)
How long are your matches?
minutes minutes
Matches start where: 45:it's a minute. (that 1.3 matches per hour)
Total playing time: ~85 hours

Calculate the number of playing fields

Total playing time: ~85 hours
 ‐ 
You need at least 8 playing fields ( 7.06 )

More curious?

We hope that this article and the tool helped you calculate the capacity of your tournament. 

At Cup Manager we help tournaments daily to partly count on this but also to create fantastic game schedules for both small & large tournaments.
Please contact us to find out more and get a demonstration of what we can do for you.