Creating a Tournament

Tournaments are a SportsPress Pro feature. They let you schedule and display events in a playoff bracket or group-stage format. Each tournament is a standalone post with its own bracket editor, display settings, and shortcodes.

Accessing the Tournament Editor

Navigate to Events > Tournaments > Add New in the WordPress admin. Tournaments appear as a sub-menu item under Events (the sp_event post type menu).

Title

Enter the tournament name in the title field at the top of the editor. This name appears in admin lists and on the frontend page. If you set a Heading in the Details meta box (see below), that heading is used as the bracket caption instead of the post title.

Standard WordPress Fields

The tournament edit screen includes the standard WordPress editor (for a description or additional content), Featured Image, and Author fields. These behave the same as on any WordPress post.

Shortcode

Two ready-to-copy shortcodes are shown here:

Bracket — displays the full bracket: [tournament_bracket id="123"]
Winner — displays the tournament winner: [tournament_winner id="123"]

Copy and paste these into any post, page, or widget.

Layout

Choose how the bracket is rendered on the frontend:

Default — bracket flows left to right; the first round appears on the left, the final on the right.
Center — bracket is mirrored; the final appears in the center column with rounds spreading outward to both sides.

Mode

Choose what entities compete in the bracket:

Team vs team — bracket slots are filled with teams (sp_team posts).
Player vs player — bracket slots are filled with players (sp_player posts).

Details

The Details meta box contains the core tournament configuration fields.

Heading — an optional caption displayed above the bracket on the frontend. If left blank, no caption is shown.

League — assign the tournament to a competition (the sp_league taxonomy). Selecting a league filters the team/player dropdowns in the bracket editor to show only entries in that league.

Season — assign the tournament to a season (the sp_season taxonomy). Selecting a season further filters the dropdowns.

Format — choose the elimination format:

Single Elimination — one loss ends a team's participation.
Double Elimination — a team must lose twice to be eliminated; the bracket splits into a Winner Bracket, a Loser Bracket, and a Final Bracket.

Teams — sets the number of rounds and the corresponding team capacity. The selector shows ranges derived from the rounds count:

Selection	Rounds	Team capacity
3–4 teams	2	up to 4
5–8 teams	3	up to 8
9–16 teams	4	up to 16
17–32 teams	5	up to 32
33–64 teams	6	up to 64

The maximum number of rounds is 6, enforced by the sp_tournament_rounds_limit filter (default value 6 in class-sp-tournament-meta-boxes.php). This caps the bracket at 64 teams.

The default selection when creating a new tournament is 3 rounds (5–8 teams).

Winner — a dropdown to designate the overall tournament champion. Choose a team (or player, depending on Mode). Once set, the winner's name and logo appear at the top of the tournament page. Set this after the tournament concludes.

Main Meta Boxes (Bracket Editor)

Below the title and sidebar, the normal content area contains the bracket editor. Which editor meta boxes appear depends on the Format selected in Details:

Single Elimination — one Bracket meta box.
Double Elimination — three meta boxes: Winner Bracket, Loser Bracket, and Final Bracket.

See the individual articles on single elimination and double elimination for how to use these editors.

Groups Meta Box

A Groups meta box appears below the bracket editors. It displays any league tables that have been linked to this tournament. You can add a new table directly from this panel using the Add New link, which opens the league table editor pre-linked to the current tournament.

Publishing

Click Publish to save and make the tournament publicly accessible. The tournament permalink follows the slug configured under SportsPress > Settings > Permalinks (default: tournament).