Auto-Scheduling: Let Score7 Build Your Tournament Schedule
Scheduling a tournament by hand is where most organizers lose hours. You have 16 teams, two courts, matches that take 45 minutes each, and you need to make sure no team plays back-to-back without a break. You open a spreadsheet, start dragging cells around, and twenty minutes later you realize Team 4 is playing on both courts at the same time.
Score7's auto-scheduler handles all of this for you. Define your constraints — venues, time slots, match duration, rest time — and let the system generate a complete, conflict-free schedule in seconds.
How it works
The scheduler is available from the Scheduler page in your tournament (visible to admins). You configure a few things, hit generate, and the schedule is applied to all your matches.
1. Set a start date and timezone
Pick the date your tournament begins. Then choose how match times are displayed:
- Specific timezone — all viewers see times in one timezone. Best for in-person events at a known location.
- Browser default — each viewer sees times in their own timezone. Best for online or distributed tournaments.
2. Define your time slots
Tell the scheduler when matches can be played. Add one or more day-and-time windows — for example:
- Thursday 17:00 to 21:00
- Saturday 09:00 to 18:00
- Sunday 10:00 to 16:00
You can also exclude specific dates entirely (holidays, venue closures, or any days you know won't work).
3. Add venues (optional)
List the courts, fields, or tables where matches can be played — "Court 1", "Court 2", "Main Pitch", whatever fits your setup. The scheduler rotates matches across venues and guarantees no two matches overlap on the same venue.
If you skip this step, the scheduler assumes unlimited parallel capacity. The only constraints are participant and referee availability.
4. Add referees (optional)
Add referee names and the scheduler will assign them to matches automatically, rotating fairly across the schedule. No referee will be double-booked.
5. Set match duration and rest time
- Match duration — how long each match takes (e.g., 60 minutes). The scheduler uses this to space matches correctly and prevent overlaps.
- Minimum rest time — the minimum gap between consecutive matches for the same participant (e.g., 30 minutes). This prevents back-to-back scheduling and gives teams time to recover.
6. Generate
Hit the button. The scheduler assigns a date, time, venue, and referee to every match in the tournament — respecting every constraint you set.
What the scheduler guarantees
- No double-booking venues. Two matches will never be scheduled on the same court at the same time.
- No participant conflicts. No team or player will be scheduled for two matches at the same time.
- No referee conflicts. No referee will be assigned to overlapping matches.
- Rest time is respected. If you set a 30-minute minimum rest, every participant gets at least that gap between matches.
After scheduling
The schedule isn't locked in stone. After the auto-scheduler runs, you can still manually edit any individual match — change its date, time, venue, or referee. The scheduler gives you the starting point; you fine-tune from there.
For multistage tournaments, you can select which stages to schedule. Run it for the group stage first, then schedule the knockout stage later when you know who advances.
There's also an "Override existing dates" option if you want to regenerate the schedule for matches that already have dates assigned.
When this saves your life
Multi-court weekend tournaments. You have three courts and 12 teams playing round-robin on Saturday. That's 66 matches to schedule across three venues, with rest time constraints and no overlaps. Doing this manually takes an hour and will probably have errors. The scheduler does it in seconds.
Leagues that span weeks. A football league running every Thursday evening for two months. Set Thursday 18:00-22:00 as your time slot, add your two pitches, set 90-minute match duration — the schedule spreads across weeks automatically.
Events with referee coordination. Add your four referees and the scheduler assigns them fairly. Export the schedule as a PDF grouped by referee and hand each ref their assignments for the day.
Last-minute changes. A venue falls through? Remove it from the list, toggle "Override existing dates," and regenerate. The scheduler rebuilds the schedule around your updated constraints.
Good to know
- The auto-scheduler is a Premium feature. You need admin access to the tournament.
- The scheduler works with all tournament formats: round-robin, knockout, Swiss, double elimination, and multi-stage.
- Individual participant unavailability isn't supported yet — you can only exclude dates globally.
- Scheduling is a one-shot operation. There's no "reschedule just round 3" — it generates the full schedule at once.
Ready to stop fighting spreadsheets? Create your tournament and let the scheduler handle the logistics.