Champions FoxLeague

Champions FoxLeague is FoxLeague’s big competition. 36 teams play one league phase in a single table. The best 24 go on to a knockout phase played over two legs, up to a single-match final. In the API its format code is league_knockout.

At a glance

Topic	Rule
Teams	36, by invitation from the leaderboard
League phase	8 matchdays, 8 matches per team, one table of 36
Places 1 to 8	Straight to the round of 16
Places 9 to 24	Knockout play-off
Places 25 to 36	Out
Knockout ties	Play-off, round of 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals over two legs
3rd place match and final	Single matches, the 3rd place match first
Matches in total	190: 144 in the league phase and 46 in the knockout phase
Who runs it	The FoxLeague team

Who organizes it

The FoxLeague team creates every edition. Players cannot create one. An edition shows in Tournaments → Browse while registration is open, with the format Champions FoxLeague. It always stays in the list when Public only is on. There and in My Tournaments it has a card of its own: a night-blue card with a gold edge and the fox head drawn as stars, showing the edition’s phase, its 36 seats, the entry fee and the next key date.

For each edition the FoxLeague team sets:

• the tier and the entry fee: Bronze (free), Silver (1,000 to 4,999 FOXSY) or Gold (5,000 FOXSY and up);
• the snapshot date, the registration deadline and the start;
• the time between games;
• an optional prize from FoxLeague on a Silver or Gold edition (see Prizes).

The FoxLeague team runs the edition without a seat of its own. An edition has no OVR range, no developer mode and no hand-picked invite list: its 36 seats go to the leaderboard’s teams through the invitation waves below.

How you get in: the invitations

The snapshot

At the snapshot date the leaderboard is frozen: every team’s rank and ELO at that moment. The snapshot date is at least 4 days before the registration deadline.

A team on the frozen board can be invited only when:

• it played at least one match in the 14 days before the snapshot. Any match counts except a developer game; a tournament match counts once its broadcast has ended;
• it has a full owned squad: 11 starters plus 7 substitutes, every card in its wallet and none listed for sale;
• it holds no seat and no open invitation in another Champions FoxLeague that is not over. A team plays one Champions FoxLeague at a time;
• its account can be invited (banned, admin and FoxLeague test accounts cannot).

The three waves

Wave	When	Who is invited
1	At the snapshot	The 36 highest eligible teams of the frozen board
2	Halfway from the snapshot to the deadline	The next eligible teams, one for every empty seat
3	Three quarters of the way to the deadline	The next eligible teams again, one for every empty seat

When wave 2 or wave 3 starts, every invitation still unanswered expires and its seat goes to the next team. The invitations of wave 3 expire at the deadline. The next teams are checked again at that wave, in the order of the frozen board. A team left out at the snapshot that is eligible by then is invited in its original rank.

Accept, decline or leave

• You are told in the bell (and by push, if you turned it on). A banner in the app shows the invitation and the time to accept it by.
• Accept is the join. On a Silver or Gold edition you pay the entry fee as you accept. There Accept opens once your wallet is on the contract’s invite list: within a minute of the invitation.
• Decline closes your invitation for good. Its seat goes to the next wave.
• You can leave after accepting until wave 3 starts. A paid entry is refunded on chain. From the start of wave 3 your seat is locked in.
• The tournament page lists every invitation by wave and the frozen leaderboard, with the reason a team could not be invited.

Not full at the deadline

An edition needs all 36 seats. If it is not full when registration closes, it is cancelled: every entry fee is refunded on chain and so is the prize from FoxLeague.

While the edition runs

From the edition’s start until your team is out (or the edition ends) you cannot join or create another standard tournament to play in. 1v1 challenges, ranked matches, casual matches and developer tournaments stay open with their usual rules. Before the start nothing changes: keep playing everything.

A team that is out is free again at once: places 25 to 36 when the last league match’s broadcast has ended, the loser of a tie when the broadcast of its deciding match has ended. The semi-final losers stay in for the 3rd place match.

The draw and the pots

When registration closes, the 36 teams are seeded by their ELO at the snapshot (a team missing from the snapshot keeps its current ELO). On equal ELO the team that joined first goes first. The seeds make four pots of 9:

Pot	Seeds
Pot 1	1 to 9
Pot 2	10 to 18
Pot 3	19 to 27
Pot 4	28 to 36

The tournament page shows the pots above the table and a pot badge (P1 to P4) next to every team. Tap a team in the pots panel to see its 8 league opponents.

The league phase

Every team plays 8 matches on 8 matchdays, one per matchday:

• 2 opponents from each pot, your own pot included;
• one of the two at home and one away, so 4 home and 4 away matches in all;
• never the same opponent twice.

All 144 fixtures are drawn at the deadline and are public from then on. A league match can end in a draw: no extra time, no penalties. Points are 3 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss. A match neither team could play costs each of them 1 point.

The table and its zones

All 36 teams share one table. A stripe on each row shows its zone:

Places	Zone	What it means
1 to 8	Round of 16	Straight into the round of 16
9 to 24	Play-off	A two-legged play-off for the 8 remaining round of 16 seats
25 to 36	Out	The edition ends here for these teams

The final places are set once the broadcast of the last league match has ended.

Tie-breakers

Teams level on points are separated in this order:

1. Head-to-head, only when every one of the level teams has played every other one. Then the points, the goal difference and the goals scored in the matches between them decide. When even one pair of them has not met, this step is skipped.
2. Goal difference over all league matches.
3. Goals scored over all league matches.
4. Higher ELO when the league phase ends.
5. The team that joined the edition first.

A team meets only 8 of the other 35, so level teams have often not all played each other. Example: X, Y and Z are level on points. X beat Y 1-0 and Z met neither. Their goal differences are Y +12, X +5, Z +3. Not all of them met, so goal difference decides: Y, X, Z.

This head-to-head rule is for Champions FoxLeague only. The other formats keep the rule on Tournaments.

The knockout phase

The knockout draw

The knockout bracket is drawn when registration closes, over league places, not teams. So the Knockout tab shows “9th v 24th” style pairings from the first day. The teams take their seats when the league phase ends.

Play-off (places 9 to 24)

Group	Pairing
A	9th or 10th v 23rd or 24th
B	11th or 12th v 21st or 22nd
C	13th or 14th v 19th or 20th
D	15th or 16th v 17th or 18th

Inside each group the draw decides which of the two higher places meets which of the two lower ones. The team placed 9th to 16th plays leg 2 at home.

Round of 16

Top 8	Meets the winner of
1st or 2nd	the 15th or 16th v 17th or 18th tie
3rd or 4th	the 13th or 14th v 19th or 20th tie
5th or 6th	the 11th or 12th v 21st or 22nd tie
7th or 8th	the 9th or 10th v 23rd or 24th tie

The top-8 team plays leg 2 at home. The draw puts 1st and 2nd into opposite halves of the bracket. It does the same with 3rd and 4th, 5th and 6th, 7th and 8th. So 1st and 2nd can only meet in the final.

Quarter-finals, semi-finals, 3rd place match and final

• Quarter-finals: in each half the tie of 1st or 2nd meets the tie of 7th or 8th. The tie of 3rd or 4th meets the tie of 5th or 6th.
• From the quarter-finals on, the team higher in the league table plays leg 2 at home.
• Semi-finals are two-legged too.
• The two semi-final losers play the 3rd place match, a single match before the final. Every edition plays it.
• The final is a single match.

Round	Ties	Matches
Play-off	8	16
Round of 16	8	16
Quarter-finals	4	8
Semi-finals	2	4
3rd place match	1	1
Final	1	1

The Knockout tab shows the whole bracket, one column per round. Each tie lists both legs (L1, L2) and the aggregate (Agg); the team that went through is in green. A shootout score is shown in brackets after the aggregate.

Two legs and the aggregate

Each team plays one leg at home and one away. The aggregate (the goals of both legs added up) decides who goes through. There is no away goals rule: 2-2 on aggregate is level, wherever the goals were scored.

• Leg 1 is a normal match. It can end in a draw.
• Leg 2 kicks off after leg 1 has ended. The match engine starts it with leg 1’s score carried in, so the scoreboard shows the leg’s own score and the aggregate (AGG) next to it.

• If the aggregate is level at the end of leg 2’s normal time, leg 2 goes on to extra time (two halves of 100 seconds). If it is still level, a penalty shootout follows: five kicks each, then sudden death for up to 20 more rounds. All of it is part of leg 2’s own game and broadcast.

• The 3rd place match and the final are single matches: level at full time goes to extra time, then penalties.
• A tie is never decided by lot. In the rare case of a level aggregate with no shootout (for example when both teams forfeit leg 2, which counts 0-0), the team higher in the league table goes through. The same rule covers the 3rd place match and the final.

The match card of each leg shows that leg’s own score. The Knockout tab shows each tie with L1, L2 and Agg (see the bracket above).

What each leg counts for

Each leg is a match of its own. Everything a tournament match moves, a leg moves, measured on that leg alone:

Effect	What happens per leg
Score on record	The leg’s own goals. Leg 2 never counts the score carried in from leg 1
Win, draw or loss	From the leg’s own score. A leg level on its own score that ended in a shootout goes to the shootout winner
ELO	Rated on the leg’s own result, like the record. Silver moves ELO with K = 12, Gold with K = 18, Bronze moves none
Player XP	Silver and Gold only. Each player earns XP from what they did in that game. Leg 2’s XP counts only leg 2’s play, extra time included, never leg 1 or the aggregate. The daily cap of 3 XP-earning matches per player applies
Condition	10 for every player who takes the pitch, per leg (more for older players, see Player Aging)
Competitive matches	On Silver and Gold, each leg counts as one competitive match for the card’s match gate

So a team can go through and still lose leg 2. In the play-off tie in the images above, the team at home in leg 2 lost that leg 1-2 and went through 2-1 on penalties. For the record and ELO, leg 2 is a loss for it.

The league matches, the 3rd place match and the final work the same way as single tournament matches.

Prizes

The entry pool (Silver and Gold)

The pool is the entry fee times 36. When the edition completes, the tournaments contract pays it on chain with the standard split:

Place	Share of the pool
Winner	45%
Runner-up	30%
3rd place (the winner of the 3rd place match)	15%
Platform fee	10%

A quarter of the platform fee (2.5% of the pool) is the creator royalty, as on every paid tournament. It never reduces a winner’s share. Example: a Gold edition at 5,000 FOXSY gives a pool of 180,000 FOXSY: 81,000 to the winner, 54,000 to the runner-up, 27,000 to 3rd place and 18,000 platform fee.

The edition completes once the broadcasts of the 3rd place match and the final have ended. Winners receive their share in their wallet with no claim needed.

The prize from FoxLeague

A Silver or Gold edition can carry a prize from FoxLeague on top of the entry pool:

• The FoxLeague team sets the amount when it creates the edition and deposits the FOXSY into the tournaments contract while registration is open. Only the contract owner or a wallet it approved as a sponsor (setSponsorApproved) can deposit. Before the deposit the contract records that wallet and the number of recipients, 8 (setSponsorTerms). At payout FoxLeague names the 8 quarter-finalists; the contract checks that they are 8 distinct teams seated in the edition.
• The prize is split equally among the 8 quarter-finalists: the 8 teams of the quarter-final round, the podium included. 100,000 FOXSY gives 12,500 to each.
• It has no platform fee and no royalty.
• The contract pays it right after the edition completed and its entry pool was paid. It never pays more than was deposited; a remainder too small to split goes back to the depositor.
• The contract settles an edition that holds a prize from FoxLeague no sooner than 24 hours after its start.
• If the edition is cancelled, the prize goes back to the depositor. A prize still unpaid 30 days after the edition completed can be returned to the depositor by the contract owner.

The invitation banner shows the prize once it is held. The tournament page shows it as held, then paid, with the transaction.

A Bronze edition

A Bronze edition is free: no entry pool and no prize from FoxLeague. Like every Bronze tournament it moves no ELO and gives no XP.

Featured editions

If the FoxLeague team features an edition (any tier), its podium enters the Hall of Fame and the featured XP boosts of Prize distribution apply.

Schedule and your squad

• Matches are played one at a time, one every “time between games” that the FoxLeague team set. A matchday has 18 matches, so at one match an hour a team plays about every 18 hours and the 190 matches take about 8 days. A match can move later when a team is busy in another tournament.
• Each match locks your formation, lineup and synced stats at its strategy lock, about 30 minutes before kickoff. Change your plan between matches, leg 1 and leg 2 included. See Match-day strategy.
• At every lock you need 11 starters plus 7 substitutes, all in your wallet. A starter who is not match-fit is replaced from the bench; fewer than 11 fit players forfeits that match 3-0. See Auto-subs and forfeit.

When a match ends

When a match ends, these update:

• the league table and its zones;
• the knockout seats: the play-off and round of 16 seats take their teams when the last league match ends; a later seat takes its team when every match of the ties that lead to it has ended;
• each leg’s score and the tie’s aggregate;
• ELO, XP and condition;
• whether a team is out;
• the final placements and the payouts.

Reading it through the API or an AI assistant

The API reference and the FoxLeague MCP server (Connect an AI) read the same public answers the app shows:

• A Champions FoxLeague tournament has format league_knockout and max_teams 36.
• In its matches, group_name League marks a league match. A knockout match has leg 1 or 2 (null for the 3rd place match and the final). The two legs of a tie share one round_number and one bracket_position; the home team of leg 2 is the away team of leg 1, so the aggregate adds both legs up from the seats. home_seed_place and away_seed_place give the league place drawn into a play-off seat or a top-8 seat.
• A team’s pot comes from its seed: 1 to 9 is pot 1, 10 to 18 pot 2, 19 to 27 pot 3, 28 to 36 pot 4.
• The league table is the standings of the tournament, in table order. Its place gives the zone: 1 to 8, 9 to 24 or 25 to 36.
• The invitations (GET /api/tournaments/{id}/invitations) and the prize from FoxLeague (GET /api/tournaments/{id}/prize) have their own routes. The MCP tool get_champions_foxleague reads both.

See also Tournaments for the rules every format shares, Match Types and the Economy map.