Running a Tournament
The complete walkthrough — from creating an account to running the event and handing out the medals.
About 20 minutes
A club or team to organise under
This guide takes you through an entire tournament setup, in order, with a screenshot of every screen. Follow it start to finish the first time; afterwards you'll likely jump straight to the stage you need. Everything you set here can be changed later from the tournament page.
The flow at a glance
- Create your account and open the tournament workspace.
- Create the tournament — name, dates, venue, and number of mats.
- Add competitors — one at a time, or import a whole roster from a CSV.
- Group them into divisions automatically by age, gender, and weight.
- Weigh in on the day and record actual weights.
- Draw the tournament — choose a format per division and lay it out on the mats.
- Run the matches — scored on the scoreboard app; results flow back here.
- Results & medals — standings and medals appear as the deciding matches finish.
Step by step
Create your account
Go to Get Started and choose Create Account. You can run tournaments with just an account — you don't have to set up a full club first (though your tournament is still organised under a club or team).
Create the tournament
From Tournaments, click Create Tournament. The guided setup asks for the essentials — give it a name, choose which club or team is organising it, set the dates and venue, and say how many mats you'll run.
Add competitors
Open the tournament and go to Add Athlete. Add people one at a time, or — much faster for a real roster — paste a CSV under Bulk import.
The CSV columns are firstName, lastName, gender, weight, birthDate, club — the header row and the club column are optional.
See Adding Athletes (CSV) for the exact format, a downloadable template, and how weights are handled.
Group them into divisions
On the Divisions tab, click Auto-Group Athletes. IpponBoard sorts everyone into divisions by age group, gender, and IJF weight class. Pick a default format, set a minimum size, and create them all at once.
Weigh in (on the day)
Use the Weigh-In screen to record each competitor's actual weight. Anyone off their declared weight is flagged, so you can move them before you draw — and the draw can be told to include only those who made weight.
Draw the tournament
Open Draw the tournament — a four-step wizard: confirm the divisions, choose how each is drawn, review, then lay them out on the mats.
For each division you get a recommended format and a live preview of exactly what it produces — pools and medals for small draws, a seeded bracket with repechage for larger ones. Change any of them if you want something different.
Finally, spread the divisions across your mats. Auto-allocate balances the fights, and you can override any division onto a specific mat.
See Drawing the Tournament for what each draw format means and when to use it.
Run the matches
On the day, matches are scored on the IpponBoard scoreboard app at each mat — results flow straight back to the tournament. Here in the backend the Fights tab is your live overview: how many bouts are scheduled, in progress, and completed, laid out per mat.
As each bout finishes, winners advance automatically — bracket slots, repechage, and pool crossovers all fill themselves in. The Draw Status tab tracks overall progress if you want a division-by-division view.
Results & medals
The Results tab is the payoff: every division with its medal count — 🥇 gold, 🥈 silver, 🥉 bronze — and the top placings. Medals only appear once the deciding matches are actually fought, so nothing is awarded early.
Open a division for the full podium — final standings with each competitor's medal, record, and win rate. This is what you read from to hand out the medals.
See Results & Medals for how results are recorded and how medals are decided in each format.