Tournaments

FoxLeague tournaments are multi-match formal events with locked lineups and FOXSY prize pools. A single tournament can span an hour or two (fast Bronze knockouts) to several days (large Swiss or round-robin events) depending on format, team count and round interval.

How to join

Open the Tournaments tab
Pick one from Browse (listed under Open with slots still free; the status filter calls these Upcoming). Public only is on by default: the list leaves out the private tournaments you are not part of, while Champions FoxLeague always shows. Untick Public only to see every tournament; your browser remembers the choice
Click JOIN
If there’s an entry fee (Silver / Gold tier), approve the FOXSY transaction in your wallet
Your team is now entered. Each match captures your formation, lineup and players’ synced stats at its strategy lock (about 30 minutes before that match’s kickoff), so you can adjust your plan between games

A tournament that shows an OVR chip (such as OVR 30-40 or OVR ≤ 35) takes only teams whose best XI OVR is inside its range: the average OVR of the strongest XI you can field from the cards you own. If yours is outside, the Join button is greyed and says why. The creator may widen the range while registration is open, so a team that is just outside can check again later. See OVR range.

The entry fee and the number of seats are written to the tournaments contract when the tournament is created. Joining pays exactly the entry fee into a free seat. A payment that does not match the fee is refused on chain. So is a join into a bracket that has already filled, so nothing leaves your wallet in either case.

Any player that arrived in your wallet via a wallet-to-wallet transfer within the transfer cooldown (21 days / 504 hours; for a card moved before its match gate, 21 days plus 6 hours for every missing match) cannot be staked into any tournament (Bronze, Silver or Gold). Same anti-rental rule already in effect for ranked plus 1v1 matches. Marketplace purchases, fusion outputs, distribute events plus shop mints do not trigger the cooldown. Only direct wallet-to-wallet transfers do. A sale does not clear a lock that is already running: the buyer inherits the rest. You can pay to cut a 21-day transfer cooldown down to a 3-day floor, every day of it or only some, in Marketplace → Shop → Reduce Cooldown; the longer lock of a card moved before its gate gets shorter only with match waivers.

You can also create your own tournament via Tournaments → Create.

The five formats

Knockout

Single-elimination bracket.

Team counts: 4, 8, 16 or 32 (exact size; the bracket starts only when full, so every team has an opponent)
Matches per team: 1-5 (depending on how far you go)
Rounds: log₂(N) (4 teams = 2 rounds, 32 teams = 5 rounds)
Seeding: classic seeded bracket (#1 vs #N, #2 vs #N-1, etc.) based on ELO at the moment the bracket is generated, when registration closes
Draws are resolved through extra time and if needed, a penalty shootout (see below)
Optional 3rd-place match between the two semifinal losers

Best for: quick, high-stakes tournaments with exciting upsets.

Groups + Knockout

Group stage followed by single-elimination.

Team counts: 8, 16, 32 or 64 (exact size; it starts only when full, so the advancing field always forms a clean knockout bracket)
Group stage: groups of 4, round-robin (each team plays 3 matches). Points: 3 win / 1 draw / 0 loss. Teams level on points are separated by head-to-head first (full rules in Tie-breakers)
Top 2 from each group advance to the knockout bracket
Cross-group KO pairing: A1 vs B2, B1 vs A2. Further group pairs follow the same pattern. Two teams from the same group sit in opposite bracket halves, so they can only meet in the final

Best for: balanced competition (everyone plays multiple matches), but stakes rise in the knockout.

Round Robin

Everyone plays everyone.

Team counts: any size from 3 to 20. Odd counts work; one team rests each matchday
Matches per team: N−1 (4 teams → 3 matches, 8 teams → 7, 20 teams → 19)
Home & away: the creator can turn on a double round robin, so each team plays every other team twice (once home, once away) for 2×(N−1) matches per team. The return leg runs after the first leg completes, so the event takes twice as long
Standings by points (3 win / 1 draw / 0 loss). Teams level on points are separated by the tie-breakers below
No elimination (every team plays every match)

Best for: fair ranking as the best team usually wins. Great for small groups and mini-leagues.

Swiss

Teams are paired at random in round 1, then by standing. Rematches are avoided while the field allows it.

Team counts: any size from 3 to 32. The creator sets a max; the event runs with whoever joins by the deadline, odd or even, as long as at least 3 teams joined
Rounds: log₂(N) rounded up, plus 1, where N is the number of teams that joined (8 teams → 4 rounds, 12 → 5, 16 → 5, 32 → 6)
Pairing: round 1 is drawn at random. From round 2 on, teams with similar records (points, then goal difference) face each other
Byes: with an odd field one team sits out each round with a bye, scored as a win (3 points). In round 1 that team is drawn at random; from round 2 on it is the lowest-ranked team
Final standings determine placement after all rounds are played

Best for: large tournaments with limited time. Everyone plays, strong teams eventually face strong opponents.

Champions FoxLeague

A league phase, then a two-legged knockout phase. The FoxLeague team creates each edition; players cannot.

Team count: exactly 36, invited from the leaderboard in three waves
League phase: one table of 36 drawn from four pots of 9 by ELO. Each team plays 8 matches, 2 against each pot, 4 at home and 4 away
Knockout phase: places 1 to 8 go to the round of 16, places 9 to 24 play a two-legged play-off, places 25 to 36 are out. The play-off, round of 16, quarter-finals and semi-finals are two-legged and decided on aggregate (no away goals rule). The 3rd place match and the final are single matches
Prizes: the entry pool with the split below, plus an optional prize from FoxLeague shared equally by the 8 quarter-finalists

The full rules are on Champions FoxLeague.

Tie-breakers

When two or more teams finish a standings table level on points, FoxLeague separates them with a head-to-head mini-table before it falls back to overall stats. The order is:

Points across all group matches.
Head-to-head mini-table, built from only the matches between the level teams. Inside it the order is:
- points in those matches
- goal difference in those matches
- goals scored in those matches
If the mini-table splits the level teams into smaller groups that are still tied, it is rebuilt from just the matches among each remaining group, then applied again.
Overall stats, used only when the mini-table still cannot separate the teams:
- overall goal difference
- overall goals scored
- higher ELO rating
- lower participant id, meaning the team that registered for this tournament earlier

The final step relies on the participant id, a value unique to every entry in the tournament, so the ranking is always fully decided with no random draw.

These rules cover every standings table: the Groups + Knockout group stage, Round Robin, plus Swiss. In Swiss two level teams may not have played each other. When that happens the head-to-head step has nothing to compare, so the ranking falls straight through to the overall stats.

The league phase of Champions FoxLeague uses the head-to-head step only when every one of the level teams has played every other one; otherwise it goes straight to the overall stats. See its tie-breakers.

The three tiers

Tiers scope the stakes:

Tier	Entry fee	Best for
Bronze	Free	Practice and casual competition; a Bronze event the FoxLeague team features also enters the Hall of Fame
Silver	1,000-4,999 FOXSY (creator picks within the range)	Competitive stakes with a real prize pool
Gold	5,000+ FOXSY (creator picks)	Highest rewards, most serious competition

The creator sets the exact FOXSY amount when creating a Silver or Gold tournament, constrained by the tier’s bounds shown above. Bronze is always free.

Creating a tournament

Open Tournaments → Create and step through format, tier, configuration, schedule and a final confirmation. Champions FoxLeague is the one format you cannot pick: the FoxLeague team creates it. You can have at most one active tournament you created as a player plus one you created as organizer-only at any time (admins are uncapped as organizers). A paid tournament waiting for your payment counts as the one you play in. 1v1 challenges have a separate cap of one active challenge per team. A few creation options are worth calling out.

Create Tournament configuration step with the Private (invite-only) toggle on, the invited teams listed below it, plus the Organizer only toggle

Creating a paid tournament you play in

On a Silver or Gold tournament that you play in (Organizer only off), Create Tournament asks your wallet for one signature: the entry fee. That one transaction creates the tournament on chain and seats you in it, with the deadline and the start you picked. Other teams see the tournament only once your payment has landed. Until then your lobby and the tournament page show it as Waiting for your payment. Its time slot is held for you meanwhile: on the calendar other players see that slot taken by a tournament being created, without its name.

You closed the wallet without signing: nothing is charged and nothing is created. Press Try again to sign the same tournament. Before it opens your wallet again, the game checks the chain, so a first signature that is still on its way is never paid twice.
Your earlier tournament or challenge is still waiting for its payment: the form says so and counts down until you can start a different one, with a link to the pending one. One payment can wait at a time. When the countdown ends the time slot is yours again: a tournament you start there replaces the unpaid one.
Your payment is not confirmed yet: the tournament opens as soon as it lands, even if you leave the page; nothing is charged twice. Closing the tab in that moment asks you to stay first.
The registration deadline is too close: pick a deadline about 13 minutes away or more (by default: the time your signature stays valid, a minute for the chain and two minutes for the check that opens your tournament if your confirmation never arrives), so your payment always lands before registration closes. The form tells you the exact number of minutes.
It could not open: the tournament is cancelled and your entry fee is refunded when the deadline passed before your payment was confirmed. The same happens when you created another tournament you play in meanwhile and when a Champions FoxLeague tournament your team is in started meanwhile. A first payment that lands after all once you started again at its time slot is refunded too: the new tournament replaced it.
A private tournament tells the teams you invited once it is open, never before.

Organizer-only tournaments, developer tournaments and Champions FoxLeague are created as before: the game creates the tournament first. On a paid developer tournament you play in, your signature then pays the entry fee. While FoxLeague has the one-signature create switched off, every paid tournament you play in is created that way too.

Private (invite-only)

Flip the Private toggle to control who can register, then invite specific teams by searching for them. A private tournament:

Appears in the lobby with a Private badge. You plus the teams you invited always see it; any other team sees it once it unticks Public only, which is on by default.
Can only be joined by the teams you invited. Everyone else sees a locked Invite Only button.
Tells every team you invited. Each one gets a You’re invited notification in the bell (and a push notification if they turned push on) once the tournament is open.
Needs enough capacity to reach the minimum. Capacity is the invited teams plus yourself (only the invited teams if you host as organizer-only). If that falls short of the minimum you cannot create it until you invite more teams or lower the minimum.

Organizer-only (host without playing)

On any tournament (Bronze included), flip Organizer only to run the event without competing in it. As an organizer-only host you:

Take no slot. On a paid tier you also pay no entry fee. Every slot stays open for the other teams.
See no Join button on your own tournament. You are running it, not playing.

This is the clean way to host a private event for a fixed set of invited teams. Invite the full field (for an 8-team tournament, invite 8 teams), since you do not take a slot yourself.

OVR range (best XI)

Set an optional minimum and/or maximum team OVR (whole numbers from 1 to 100) to keep a tournament for teams of a similar strength. The OVR that counts is a team’s best XI OVR: the average OVR of the strongest XI its manager can field from the cards they own right now, whatever the saved lineup.

How the strongest XI is found. A card plays only in its own position, as in Tactics. For each formation you can pick in Tactics, the XI takes the best goalkeeper, then the best defenders, midfielders and forwards for that formation’s slots, by card OVR. The highest of these averages counts (a tie keeps the formation listed first in Tactics). Three strong goalkeepers count once: a formation has one goalkeeper slot.
Every card counts, cards listed for sale on the marketplace included (they can be delisted).
Too few cards for any formation (for example no goalkeeper): each formation is filled as far as your cards go, the one with the most slots filled is kept (a tie: the higher average) and the OVR is the average of the cards in it.
The range is checked once, when a team joins. A team outside it cannot join. A paid entry sent anyway is refunded.
Nothing is checked after the join. Lineup changes, training and the growth of your players during the tournament are never measured against the range.
If you take a seat (not organizer-only), your own best XI OVR must be inside the range you set. The create form shows your best XI next to the two inputs, with the formation it comes from.
Champions FoxLeague tournaments and developer tournaments take no range.
In the lobby a tournament with a range shows its chip: OVR 30-40, OVR ≤ 35 or OVR ≥ 30. A team outside the range sees the Join button greyed with the reason.
The lobby shows every seated team’s Best XI OVR with the formation it comes from: the same number the range checks and every page shows (see your team OVR).

Widening the range

Not enough teams? While registration is open (before the registration deadline), the creator can widen the range from the tournament page: Widen the range sits next to the chip. An admin can do it too. No one else can.

Wider only. Lower the minimum or raise the maximum. Clear a field to remove that bound. Clearing both removes the range.
Never narrower. A higher minimum or a lower maximum is refused. A side with no bound stays without one: a range set as OVR ≤ 35 can go up to OVR ≤ 45, but it cannot get a minimum.
Every team that joined stays in. A wider range only lets more teams join, so no seat is measured again.
The dialog shows the range now and the range after the change before you confirm. Once registration has closed, the tournament has started or it was cancelled, the range can no longer change.
Champions FoxLeague and developer tournaments have no range, so there is nothing to widen.

Deleting your tournament

While your tournament is still open for registration, its page shows Delete Tournament to you as its creator, at the bottom of the page. Once it has started or finished it cannot be deleted. On a Silver or Gold tournament the delete first refunds the entry fee of every team that paid one, on chain. The tournament is removed only once its contract entry is closed and FoxLeague’s records show every entry fee returned; until then it stays cancelled.

How your team is used in matches

Your team is not frozen when you join. Each match captures your team at its strategy lock, about 30 minutes before that match’s kickoff:

Formation and lineup: whatever you have saved at the lock. Change them between matches to plan for each opponent.
Player stats: each player’s on-chain synced attributes as they stand at the lock. Training counts for a match only once you sync it before that match locks.
Condition: read live at the lock. It regenerates passively between matches.

A match already past its lock is fixed. Newer syncs, training and lineup changes only affect your future matches.

See Match-day strategy for the full flow, the Upcoming Games page and the lock countdowns.

Schedule

Every tournament has:

Registration deadline: last moment to join before the bracket is generated. A tournament with fewer teams than its minimum at the deadline is cancelled and every entry fee paid is refunded on chain. A Knockout or a Groups + Knockout must be full (its minimum is its size), so one that is not full at the deadline is cancelled the same way
Tournament start: when the first match kicks off. Must be at least 1 hour after creation so the bracket can be pre-scheduled, more than 5 minutes after the registration deadline and at most 90 days ahead
Time between games: every match is played one at a time, this many minutes apart. The creator picks a step from 30 minutes up to a day: 30 min / 1 h / 2 h / 4 h / 6 h / 8 h / 12 h / 1 day

Games run fully sequentially, one every “time between games”, so spectators can watch each match end to end. A short interval with a small bracket wraps up in a few hours. A large field or a 1-day interval can stretch a tournament across several days.

If one of the two teams in a match is busy with a match in another tournament at that time, the scheduler pushes the match later (keeping a 20-minute clearance around the other commitment) and every match after it shifts with it. A tournament can therefore run longer than the plain estimate, never shorter.

Blocking window (anti-overlap)

Each tournament reserves a blocking window from one hour before its first kickoff until one hour after its booked play time. The booked play time counts about 3 minutes per scheduled match and ignores the time between games, so the window is a coarse reservation rather than the real span. The check runs when a tournament is created: the new window may not overlap the window of any other tournament on the platform that is not completed or cancelled, otherwise creation fails with a time-slot conflict. Joining has no window check. A 1v1 challenge never reserves a window of its own. You cannot create or join one while you are busy with a tournament: from 1 hour before your own match until its broadcast ends. In a group stage every team of a group also stays busy from 1 hour before the group’s last match until every match of the group has ended. In a Swiss round you stay busy until every match of your round has ended. The blocking window itself does not stop a 1v1.

You do not have to guess a free time. On the Schedule step the form tells you whether the start you picked is free and, when it is not, proposes the next free slot with a Use this slot button. See free times opens a calendar in your own time zone: every start where your tournament fits is green. The windows of other tournaments are shown with their titles. A gray block is another tournament’s start window: the hour before its kickoff, the time it needs to get its first round under way and an hour after. Hover over it or tap it to see the tournament and its booked times. A tournament that runs for days books only this window; its later rounds run alongside other tournaments, so they do not block the calendar. A new tournament cannot start inside a gray block. One tap on a green start sets the start and the registration deadline and keeps the rest of the form. The calendar and the creation check use the same rule, so a green start is one that creation accepts.

Seeding

When registration closes, all participants are seeded by ELO rating:

Seed #1 = highest ELO at the moment the bracket is generated
Seed #N = lowest ELO

Seeding drives:

Knockout bracket slots (classic #1-vs-#N pairing so top seeds don’t meet in round 1)
Groups + KO pot distribution (balanced groups)
Swiss doesn’t use seeding either: round 1 is drawn at random, later rounds pair by standing
Round Robin doesn’t use seeding for match order (everyone plays everyone)
Champions FoxLeague cuts the seeds into four pots of 9 for the league draw, by ELO at its snapshot (see The draw and the pots)

Draws and penalty shootouts

Round Robin / Group stage / Swiss draws are legal results (1 point each).
Knockout / semifinal / final / 3rd-place match draws cannot stand. The tie goes 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. The winner advances. A tie is never decided by lot.
Champions FoxLeague two-legged ties: leg 1 can end in a draw. Leg 2 starts with leg 1’s score carried in; if the aggregate is level at the end of its normal time, leg 2 goes to the same extra time and shootout. See Two legs and the aggregate.

Third-place match

Knockout and Groups + KO tournaments support an optional 3rd-place match between the two semifinal losers. The creator toggles this when setting up the tournament. In a featured tournament the Hall of Fame lists the 3rd-place team alongside the champion and runner-up.

If the creator leaves it OFF, both semifinal losers finish as “3rd/4th” without separation.

Champions FoxLeague always plays its 3rd place match, as a single match before the final.

Auto-subs and forfeit

FoxLeague expects you to own a full 18 (11 starters + 7 substitutes) when your next tournament match locks. If a starter is not match-fit at that moment (condition below 30 or in the transfer cooldown), the tournament automatically substitutes a fit bench player in.

The match report shows which auto-subs were applied for each side
If fewer than 11 match-fit players can be assembled from your 18 (or you no longer own all 18), your team forfeits the match 3-0 and the opponent takes the win. The forfeit reason is shown on the match card so you know what went wrong
If both teams forfeit the same match, it is recorded 0-0 as a loss for each side and each loses 1 standings point, so a standings total can go below zero. In a knockout match, where one side must go through, the home side of the fixture advances (in round 1 of a Knockout, the higher seed)

Keep your bench deep. A forfeit in round 1 of a Gold Knockout is an expensive lesson.

Hall of Fame

Completed tournaments that the FoxLeague team marked as featured are archived in the Hall of Fame tab. Any tier can be featured, Bronze included. Each entry shows:

Tournament title, format, tier, completion date
Winner team name + badge
Runner-up team name + badge
3rd place team name + badge (if a 3rd-place match was played)

A permanent record of every featured tournament. A tournament that was not featured keeps its bracket and results on its own page.

Prize distribution

When a Silver or Gold tournament completes, the prize pool (entry fee × the number of teams that actually joined, not the maximum) is distributed on-chain automatically. Winners receive their share directly in their wallet with no claim action needed:

The current split:

Place	Share of pool
Winner	45%
Runner-up	30%
3rd place	15%
Platform fee	10%

In a Knockout or Groups + KO event without a 3rd-place match there is no third-place finisher, so the 15% goes to the runner-up (45 / 45 / 10). In Round Robin and Swiss, 3rd place is the third team in the final standings.

Example (with a 3rd-place match): 16 teams × 1,000 FOXSY entry = 16,000 FOXSY pool → 7,200 winner / 4,800 runner-up / 2,400 third-place / 1,600 platform fee.

A Silver or Gold Champions FoxLeague edition can also carry a prize from FoxLeague, held in the tournaments contract and split equally among its 8 quarter-finalists after it completes. See Prizes.

A quarter of the platform fee (2.5% of the pool, so 400 FOXSY of the 1,600 in the example above) is paid as a creator royalty to the provider of the AI binary the matches were played with. It is taken from the fee and travels in the same distribution transaction as the prizes, so it never reduces what the winners receive. The contract enforces this. Prize payouts must land between 85% and 90% of the seated pool. The royalty itself is capped on chain at 2.5% of that pool.

Tournaments flagged as featured by the platform admins also award XP boosts: the winner gets 2× XP for 48 hours plus a Tournament Champion badge and title, the runner-up gets 1.5× XP for 24 hours. Boosts do not stack with each other or with the shop XP booster; the highest active multiplier applies.

Bronze tournaments have no entry fee and therefore no prize pool. They change no ELO and give no XP, so they’re for practice and casual competition. A Bronze tournament the FoxLeague team features also enters the Hall of Fame. Its winner and runner-up then get the featured rewards described above.

Tips

Plan for the whole run. You must field a legal 11+7, all owned, at every match’s lock or that game is forfeited. Nothing stops you from joining two tournaments that run in the same period, so check both schedules before committing.
Watch the time between games. Games are sequential, so the total length is roughly the number of games times the interval. A 30-minute interval with a small bracket wraps up in a few hours. A large field or a 1-day interval spans days. It runs longer still when matches are pushed back to keep a team clear of its other tournament.
Check the tier before committing FOXSY. Silver and Gold entry fees leave your wallet the moment you join. Leaving while registration is still open (before the deadline) refunds the fee on-chain. Once the deadline passes you cannot leave. Every refund is exact, down to the amount the contract holds for your entry. If a tournament is cancelled (or you paid on chain but never took a seat) and the game server cannot push your money back, it stays in the contract. Once the tournament is cancelled or completed you can pull it yourself: the page of a completed tournament shows a Claim my entry back button for an entry that never took a seat. You can also call the contract’s claimRefund endpoint with the tournament id.
Add a third-place match if you can. Without it the 15% third-place share simply goes to the runner-up; with it a third team gets paid.
Sync before a match’s lock, not just before joining. Each match reads your synced stats at its lock, so train and sync ahead of a game for the improvement to count. Unsynced training does not.