Getting Started
Kelly Goodchild avatar
Written by Kelly Goodchild
Updated over a week ago

Welcome to start.gg! We’re glad to have you aboard. There’s a lot we’d love to help out with, so below are some tips and tricks on getting to know your tournament page. By the end of this, you should understand the five basics to complete before showing your tournament to the world.

  • Dashboard

  • Settings

  • Registration

  • Events

1) Dashboard

The first page to tackle in tournament creation is the Dashboard page. It walks you through the first crucial elements in launching your tournament page, including:

  • Publishing your tournament page, either Publicly or Link Only

  • Publishing your events & signifying whether you want to hide brackets and/or seeding.

  • Publishing registration so that users can begin registering.

  • Publishing your attendees section on the public tournament page.


For more information on how to use the Dashboard page, make sure to check out our Publishing page.

2) Settings

Details

Navigate to the Details page to insert important information for event goers to see. This includes:

  • Tournament Name

  • Short Slug (Short URL)

  • Start Date and End Date (and time)

  • Venue Address (This doesn't need to be entered if you are running a Online tournament)

  • Primary Contact (This section is mandatory to fill out).

  • Tournament Image and Banner

  • A section that bring you to edit your tournament homepage. For more information, check out our Widgets Article and Customizing Widgets article.

  • Rules (These are the General rules for the tournament as a whole. Event Specific Rules (example: Tekken 1v1) go on a separate page located in the Event Settings of the Admin Panel.

Note: The Start/End Date and Time on the Details page (and on all other pages of your tournament) will be based on your local time zone. Most fields that allow you to set a time should also display the time zone under the box. There is not a way to change the time zone of your tournament.

Below, we will go over some important sections located within the public side of a tournament page!

Home

Off the bat, most of the details you inputted from earlier will be shown on the top section of the tournament page. 

Tournament Details

Before you can publish your events, you will need to replace the default text located on a tournament your own creation. You can begin this process by click on the Edit Page section on the bottom right.

For more information on customizing your tournament home page, check out our Widgets Article and Customizing Widgets article.

Events Section

This is the section where all your created events will appear. This will also be a alternative way for competitors to register for your tournament when it becomes available.

On this section, there are 5 shortcuts to take note of: Overview, Bracket, Standings, Stats. All these links serve as shortcuts to the Event Schedule section, which we go into depth below.

Attendees Section

This section showcases the total amount of attendees throughout all the events on your tournament page. This also counts Spectators as well! 

Location + Contact Info Sections

The section is home to important info such as:

  • Venue Information and Directions

  • Email

  • Admins of your tournament and their connected accounts (twitter/discord/etc.)

Rules + Prizing

This section will showcase the general rules for your tournament that users need to abide by. Also, if you set it up, this is where your Prizing section will be seen. You can find more information on setting this up on our Prizing Article.

Manage Registration

This section shows up once your competitors have registered successfully for your tournament. From here, users can view what tournaments they've registered for, what other events they can register for, check out their upcoming matches and times, change their contact information, & more.

Admin Permissions

If you’re running your tournament with additional people, you can add them under the "Admin Permissions" page.

To do this, select the “Add Admin” button and search for your team’s start.gg gamertags (You can also search their email / real name in the event of their tag being too common!).

You can learn more about the 4 roles you can assign and how your tournament staff can accept their assigned role invites in our help center article here.

3) Registration

Registration Settings

In Registration Settings, you’ll set registration deadlines and customize what attendees see in your registration process. Registration fields in particular is where you can set a variety of options around venue pricing, customizing what kinds of registration are allowed, and more. We define a venue fee as the fee paid by an attendee to attend the tournament, and an event fee as the fee going towards a particular game’s event, mostly in the form of prize pools.

Whether it’s free or not, a venue fee is required for all attendees. You may have multiple types of venue registration options or simply have one. In advanced settings, you can also adjust an overall tournament attendee cap.

Event fees are optional based on what events players want to enter. Note that each event made will appear here, but clicking "Edit" will take you to the settings page for that individual event.

Beyond editing price, you can choose from a host of options, including whether a specific event’s registration is public or not, or setting a cap on specific events.

For more on registration, check out the Registration section of our Help Center. Also, make sure to check out the Event Settings page for information on event-level prices + settings.

Payments Setup

All users accepting payment should visit the Payment Setup tab of the Registration Settings page. To enable cash payments, click the Enable Onsite button. Players who select this option during registration will be marked as Unpaid in your attendees list. For Paypal and Stripe, you can connect your accounts to a tournament page, linking all registration payments to those accounts. You’ll want to enable at least one of these options for any paid tournament.

Read more on payment options here.

Attendees List

Here you’ll see the basics of all your attendee’s information. You can also sort this list at the top by the events they have entered, payment status, and their team status. Clicking on an attendee lets you edit their basic registration options. This lets you select what events they have entered and whether they have paid for paid events - useful for tracking day-of signups.

Additionally, you'll be able to see whether a player is "Verified". Any player who registers themselves is verified. Any manually-added player with a start.gg account who has not confirmed being added to the tournament shows as "Pending". Any manually-added player who does not have a start.gg account shows as "Anonymous". For more info on attendee confirmation, click here.

On the top right you’ll find two buttons. The “export” button lets you export a spreadsheet showing everything in your attendees’ registration (Only available to those with full administrator permissions). The "add attendee" function is further explained here.

Teams

To modify and monitor teams at your event, visit the Teams tab. Read more on teams and how to set them up here.

4) Events

The last step to check before your tournament can go live is the Events Section. This section dictates the creation, visibility, and options for all the events within your tournament page.

The gif below showcases how an example Event is created for a tournament page.

For more information on how Events are created and the options to choose, make sure to check out our Event Creation article.

What now?

Congratulations, your tournament page is now ready to go live!

Be sure to make your page public from the Dashboard and use your short URL to advertise your page.

Next up? Scheduling and brackets. You can find all that and more below!

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