How many courts do I need?

The arithmetic

Twelve teams in three groups of four is 18 group matches plus a playoff. On two courts at 25 minutes a slot that is about four hours; on four courts, about two and a half.

The 25 minutes is not the match — it is the match plus getting the next pair on, finding the referee and writing the score down. Estimating on match length alone is the single most common way a tournament overruns.

Round robins parallelise, knockouts do not

In a round robin any match can be played whenever a court is free, so four courts really is about a quarter of the time of one. Doubling the courts genuinely halves the day.

A knockout cannot do this. The quarter-finals cannot start until the round of sixteen has finished, so the last few rounds run on fewer and fewer courts however many you have. An eight-team knockout on eight courts still takes three rounds — you cannot go faster than the tree.

The practical consequence: more courts than half your team count is wasted on a knockout, and never wasted on a round robin.

The other constraints

Referees, usually. Two courts with one qualified referee is one court. Count officials before you count courts.

Scoring capacity. If one person is entering all the results from a phone, four courts finishing at once is a queue. This is less of a problem than it used to be, but it is real.

And the hall booking, which is the constraint that actually decides it. Work backwards from when you have to be out.

A shortcut

Rather than calculating, enter your teams and courts in the wizard and read the estimate off the format screen. It quotes matches and a rough duration for every format against the numbers you actually entered, which is faster than doing this on paper and less likely to be wrong.

Common questions