How to Schedule a Double Elimination Tournament

A double elimination tournament is a multi-team/participant sports tournament in which a team or participant does not get to continue in the competition if two losses are sustained. Double elimination tournaments are a great source of entertainment for spectators. An excellent source of fun and competition, double elimination tournaments are a great way to give teams or individuals a second chance to come back and try to win a tournament. A lot of times, fans will get caught up rooting for an underdog team that has lost once but is making a comeback and has a chance to win the tournament.

Things You'll Need

  • Tournament Bracket software or Excel spreadsheet to plug in the brackets
  • Number of participating teams or individual players depending on the tournament
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Instructions

    • 1

      Download tournament bracket software from the source listed in Resources. Double click the software icon to start the software up. You can also create an Excel spreadsheet if you want. This type of software really helps you manage your double elimination tournaments much easier.

    • 2

      Find out the number of teams or individual players participating in the tournament. You must have an even number of teams. If you have an odd number of players or teams, there must be a playoff between the lowest seated teams for the final available spot.

    • 3

      Develop "brackets" or groupings of teams that will play one another in a successive order, the winner of each match moving on to compete against a new competitor and the loser of the match dropping into a different bracket.

    • 4

      Set up two brackets, one is called the Winners Bracket. The second is called the Losers Bracket. First, all teams start in the Winners Bracket. When they win, they stay in the Winners Bracket and move forward. However, if they lose, they drop down to the Losers Bracket and cannot lose again or they are out of the tournament.

    • 5

      Schedule the tournament so that if a team comes from the Losers Bracket to play in the championship game, that team has to beat the team from the Winners Bracket twice in order to be the champions. This makes the tournament fairer and more exciting.