Rollare

Create your first tournament

The ten-minute path: create, fill the roster, share the page, record results live.

This guide walks through a complete event cycle: creating a tournament, filling the roster, sharing the public page, and recording results on event day. It takes about ten minutes of setup for a typical 8–16 team community event.

1. Create the tournament

From your workspace, choose New tournament and pick:

  • Format — if you are unsure, read Choosing a format. You can change everything except recorded results later, so a wrong guess is cheap at this stage.
  • Team count — a placeholder roster is created at this size; you can expand or shrink it before matches begin.
  • Sport category (optional) — categories like pickleball or volleyball only tune form defaults and recommended settings; they never change how the bracket behaves.
  • Name, date, venue — the name appears on the public page and share cards.

The tournament starts as a draft. Drafts are invisible to the public — perfect for setting things up early.

2. Fill the roster

Three ways, in any combination:

  • Type or paste names — open the roster and edit team rows directly. You can also paste a whole list via Import from text/CSV (one team per line; works with rosters copied from other tools like Pickleball Brackets).
  • Collect sign-ups — enable registration and let players submit through the public page. Approved entries are imported onto the roster with randomized seeds.
  • Randomize — draw seeds, shuffle names, or random-split into groups before the draw.

Seeds decide first-round pairings. Team 1 meets the lowest seed, team 2 the second-lowest, and so on — standard bracket seeding.

3. Publish and share

Hit Publish to make the tournament live. The public page at /t/{slug} now shows your bracket, roster, and (if configured) the registration card and schedule.

Share it with:

  • The link — the page is the single source of truth; everyone checking it always sees the current state.
  • Social cards — the link unfurls to a rich preview card with your event's colors, format, date, and a QR code.
  • Calendar links — players can subscribe to the schedule (ICS) and get a personal "my tournament" view with their next match. See Public page.

4. Record results on event day

Open the bracket and click a team row to record a winner (or switch to score entry in settings). Everything on the public page updates immediately — no manual refresh needed for people watching.

  • Wrong click? Undo restores the last result.
  • Changing an older match? Rollare warns you when recorded results downstream would be cleared, and asks for confirmation. The change is logged in the audit trail.
  • Multiple helpers? Invite them as referees or scorekeepers — they can only record matches assigned to them. See Officials and access.

When the final match is recorded, the champion is crowned automatically and the tournament is completed. You can archive it to freeze everything read-only — useful as a public record after protests would be unfair.

What to set up next