Whether you’re putting together a tournament at the end of your regular sports season or you want to hold a one-off tournament for a sport in your community, you need a way that makes it easy for participants to sign up.
Insert tournament registration software—a tool that can help you build an online registration process for your tournament so you can bring in as many interested participants as possible. Walk through the seven best options below so you can find the best tournament management software for your needs.
6 best tournament registration software
Need to get the word out about your sports tournament? Learn more about how you can make tournament management easy with the right tools in your toolbelt.
These seven software options have a number of features that fit different needs. Read through to find the best option for your sports organization.
Jersey Watch
Jersey Watch is a sports management software that focuses heavily on helping organizers manage youth sports leagues—though it can be used for any and all ages. Not only does Jersey Watch have everything organizers need to manage a full-length league, it can also assist with tournaments.
Easily build your tournament website using our sports website builder. Start with a template, then choose a color palette and fonts to use throughout your website design. Jersey Watch’s customizable drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to share key information about your tournament.
From there, you can easily add online tournament registration, including all the necessary custom fields for gathering participant information, as well as taking registration fees online. The easy-to-use functionality makes it a breeze for tournament organizers to gather everything they need about players—like name, age, shirt size, and more.
Jersey Watch also lets you create the schedule for your tournament so you can share the dates and times with players ahead of time. Being transparent about the time commitment helps participants be as prepared as possible.
Other important features include:
- Built-in donations features to help with fundraisingand sponsorships
- Background checks
- Communication tools
Pricing: Starts at $29/month.
TourneySoft
TourneySoft is a software that’s fully focused on helping sporting organizations put on tournaments. While others on our list—like the aforementioned Jersey Watch—offer help with both league management and tournaments, this option is perfect for those who only need to set up tournaments (like an annual charity golf tournament).
Their tournament-specific features include:
- Registration
- Payment collection
- Tournament microsite
- Scheduling
- Live streaming
- Score tracking
- Embeddable tournament widgets
Pricing: TourneySoft is free to get started and has tournament management add-ons for additional costs.
TeamSnap
TeamSnap is a sports management software that offers registration and other tools for leagues, sports-related businesses, as well as tournaments. There’s even a smartphone app that makes it easy for coaches and players to get in touch with each other about practices and tournament games.
Tournament-related features include:
- Real-time communication
- Scheduling
- Pool/bracket automation
- Registration
- Payments
- Sponsorship
- Website builder
Pricing: Sports organizations looking to use TeamSnap’s features for their tournament can contact TeamSnap to get a quote.
Tournify
Tournify is an easy-to-use web app perfect for managing the entire tournament ecosystem, from registration all the way to awards ceremony, if you so choose. Open a custom registration page, choose your tournament format—whether you’re starting with a round robin structure or heading straight to the knockout rounds, create your game schedule, and easily keep score.
Other tournament-specific features Tournify offers include:
- Tournament website
- Mobile app
- Notifications for match reminders
- Slideshow for rankings
- Team management
Pricing: Completely free to use for tournaments with up to 8 teams. Premium plans for larger tournaments start at $45/tournament. Annual tournaments can contact the Tournify team for an annual subscription price.
Sports Engine Tourney
Sports Engine Tourney (formerly Tourney Machine) is a full suite of tools that include bracketing, auto-scheduling, communication, and a mobile app for your tournament.
Every tournament also gets live scoring with brackets and schedules that are easy to access for your teams. You can also collect online registration details before your event, including divisions, rosters, and waivers.
Pricing: You can request pricing on the Tourney Machine website.
RedPodium
RedPodium is an event registration software that was created for more endurance sports, like runs, races, and other events. However, its features can also be used to manage your upcoming tournament if you wish.
Tournament-related features include:
- Event page builder
- Event registration
- Branding
- Merchandise selling
- Peer fundraising
- Check-in app
- CRM
Pricing: $0.99 per registrant.
Considerations for choosing a tournament registration software
Not sure how to choose the best tournament management system for your needs? Let’s walk through a few essentials that many tournament organizers look for.
Register athletes online
Online team registration is often a key feature that makes running a tournament easy. By offering registration capabilities right on your event website, you make participation much more accessible, rather than only accepting in-person applications.
By using software with an online registration option, you can register more players, store registrant information online so you don’t have to keep track of it, and accept payments online and immediately deposit them into your tournament’s bank account.
Easily create a website
Event management 101 dictates that you need to have a website or online presence to let people know about your upcoming tournament. This is an easy way to get the word out, and provide information that participants need, but also showcase a leaderboard and standings throughout the tournament.
Find a tool that not only makes it incredibly easy for you or your team to create a tournament website (even with no previous website design experience), but that will also host your website so that you don’t have to deal with any external software.
Make communication easy
Running a tournament involves contacting many people—other tournament organizers, coaches, referees, players, and even fans—and you want to make that process as seamless as possible.
This means you’ll want to look for a tool that allows you to send text and/or email blasts to everyone, providing updates on field conditions, postponements, or other key changes. Many tools will also offer a mobile app that lets you create smaller communication groups.
Accept payments and membership fees
Stop chasing around participants to get them to pay their dues. Instead, make it a mandatory part of your registration form. By choosing a tool that allows you to accept payments, membership fees, and other costs online, you can clear up this headache, knowing that all participants will have already paid everything they owe to join the tournament.
You can even find sponsors and manage their partnership/costs online as well, making it easy to fully fund your tournament.
Find the best tournament registration software for your needs
Make sure your tournament runs like a well-oiled machine with the right tournament registration software. Online registration, payment processing, scheduling, and communication tools should be right at your fingertips.
We’d love it if you gave Jersey Watch a try! We have everything you need to seamlessly create and run a tournament—and more.
