How to Set Up Basketball Tournament Bracketing

Whether sponsoring a basketball tournament fundraiser benefiting a sports organization or just for enjoyment, creating a tournament bracket keeps the event organized. Post the bracket near the tournament registration table so teams can reference the winning teams and see who they may be competing against later in the tournament. You can have seeded brackets, which organizes the teams by rank or season success, or use a blind draw, leaving the order and initial competitions to the luck of the draw.

Instructions

    • 1

      Gather team registrations and any fees involved with the participation. Limit the number of teams as per the allotted tournament time frame or set a registration ending time or date to give you time to prepare the bracket.

    • 2

      Visit a free tournament bracket-making website such as BracketMaker or Print Your Brackets to create and print the tournament preparations. Alternatively, construct tournament brackets in a blank word processing document. Draw a horizontal line for every team and connect them in pairs with a short vertical line. These represent the individual competitions. Horizontal lines extend from the center of the short lines for the competition winner and connect to other winners with vertical lines until there is only one overall winner.

    • 3

      Select a tournament bracket in accordance with the number of teams in the tournament and the type of tournament held. For example, tournaments may be single or double elimination, seeded or blind draw.

    • 4

      Right click on the bracket and select print to send the customized bracket to your home printer. Take the bracket to a printing company to enlarge the image or, for smaller tournaments, keep it to a landscape-oriented letter-sized paper to save money.