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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.

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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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Shortcode

Two ready-to-copy shortcodes are shown here:
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  • 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.
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Layout

Choose how the bracket is rendered on the frontend:
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  • 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:
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  • 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.
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Heading — an optional caption displayed above the bracket on the frontend. If left blank, no caption is shown.
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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.
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Season — assign the tournament to a season (the sp_season taxonomy). Selecting a season further filters the dropdowns.
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Format — choose the elimination format:
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  • 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:
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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.
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The default selection when creating a new tournament is 3 rounds (5–8 teams).
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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.
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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:
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  • 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.
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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.
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Publishing

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

The Events > Tournaments list view shows these columns:
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  • Title — tournament name, linked to the edit screen.

  • League — assigned competition, or "All" if none.

  • Season — assigned season, or "All" if none.

  • Rounds — the stored rounds value (a number from 2 to 6).

  • Layout — Default or Center.

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