Football tournament software and live scoring

Football competitions come in more shapes than most sports. A district league plays every team home and away across a season, a school cup is a single-elimination knockout over two days, and a youth festival groups teams into pools before the winners and runners-up move into a knockout stage. Zeetius Tournaments runs knockouts, round robins, leagues and team events, so the same organisation can use one system for all of them.

Each competition is set up with its own categories, such as under-12, under-14, under-17, open, boys, girls or mixed, and its own format. Small-sided football, such as five-a-side and seven-a-side, sits alongside the full 11-a-side game, with the match length and squad size set for each category rather than fixed by the software.

League football is decided by a points table, usually three points for a win and one for a draw, with goal difference and head-to-head results used to separate teams level on points. Rules differ between federations and age groups, so tell us how your competition ranks teams and we will set the format up to match it.

• Leagues and round robins. Every team plays every other team in its league or pool, once or home and away.
• Pools into knockouts. Group stages feed quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final, the usual shape of a festival or championship.
• Straight knockouts. Single-elimination cups with byes where the number of teams is not a power of two.

A football tournament is limited by its pitches. A venue might have two full-size pitches and four small-sided ones, each available for a fixed number of kick-off slots a day, and every team needs enough rest between games. Zeetius Tournaments generates the fixtures and the schedule automatically, then lets the organiser move a match to another pitch or time as the day unfolds.

Knockout football needs room for matches that do not finish in normal time. When a tied knockout tie goes to extra time or a penalty shoot-out, the next match on that pitch starts later, and the schedule has to absorb the delay. Running every pitch from one schedule means the organiser can see which games are running late and adjust the rest of the day before teams are left waiting.

Referees and assistant referees are nominated and allocated to matches through technical official management, so the organiser knows who is on which pitch and nobody is booked for two kick-offs at once. On a crowded festival day, when a quarter-final runs into extra time, the organiser can see at a glance which referee is still on the pitch and who is free for the next match.

A football association manages more than matches. It affiliates clubs, registers players each season, handles transfers, appoints referees and sanctions the competitions run under its name. Zeetius Federation brings these together, with separate workspaces for national, state, district and club tiers, so a district can manage its own members while the association sees every club and every competition.

Once results are in, rankings and certificates are prepared from the real outcomes, and every participant in a school or youth tournament can receive a certificate generated straight from the results. Membership fees and entries are paid online, and automatic email and SMS messages tell clubs about renewals, fixtures and results without anyone sending them by hand.

The association's public website, membership cards and certificates can carry its own name and branding rather than ours. Zet AI lets the association's office ask questions about its own membership and participation data in plain language, such as how many under-14 players registered in each district this season, instead of building a new spreadsheet for every board meeting.