Building Groups and a Schedule with the Tournament Builder
The Tournament Builder lets you set up groups, seeding, playoff format, and the full match schedule for a class in just a few steps. This guide walks through the process from start to finish.
1. Opening the Tournament Builder
In Managerzone, go to Classes and select the Class you want to work on. Check the class's date first — if it was accidentally left set to a past period, correct it to the right dates and save. Once the date is correct, a blue "Build Tournament" button appears. Click it to open the builder.
2. Creating groups
Inside the builder, add as many regular groups as your format needs — for example Group A, B, C, D. Each group is a container you'll fill with teams.
If your format includes a later phase — such as an overall ranking round fed by teams from several groups — you can also create placeholder groups here and connect them once the group stage results are known.
3. Placing teams
You can place teams into groups in two ways:
- Manually: drag each team from the team list into the group you want. This gives you full control over the distribution.
- By rating (snake seeding): if teams have ratings set, use snake seeding instead. The system distributes the ranked list of teams across the groups in a zig-zag pattern — 1 to Group A, 2 to Group B, 3 to Group C, then back the other way — so overall strength stays balanced across groups.
4. Modified groups (e.g. beach volleyball)
For sports like beach volleyball, you can select a modified group format instead of a standard round robin — typically a 4-team group where seed 1 plays seed 4 and seed 2 plays seed 3 in round one, with winners and losers crossing over afterward. Choose this when creating or editing a group.
5. Setting up the schedule
Once groups and playoff format are in place, move to the Schedule settings. Here you choose how matches are distributed across courts — grouped together by group, or alternating between groups so several groups play in parallel. Match length and break time are pre-filled from the class settings but can still be adjusted here.
Before generating anything, double-check the tournament's start and end date and time, since the whole schedule is built around this window — especially if the tournament spans multiple days and courts (for example two courts over two days).
6. Generating and adjusting the schedule
Click Generate to create the first version of the schedule. If something doesn't look right, you can simply regenerate it — no need to start over. Before publishing, you can still fine-tune things by dragging individual matches to a different court if needed.
7. Hiding matches until you're ready to publish
If you're not ready for the public to see the schedule yet, go back to the class's Settings tab, check "Hide matches for this class," and save. The matches stay hidden until you uncheck this later.
Already have a published tournament and need to reorder or reschedule matches? See our guide on using the Match Board to rearrange live matches by dragging them between courts and time slots.
