Commissioner setup guide

Bracket Master — Commissioner Setup Guide

Seeded single-elimination bracket for any tournament — contest mode with round-by-round scoring, or publish-only for live winner-tapping. Any team count, regions, byes, and an optional 3rd-place game.

Bracket pool commissioners · 6 min read

Bracket Master is a seeded single-elimination tournament bracket you can run for any event — March Madness, a playoff, an office pool, even a made-up bracket for your favorite tacos. You can run it two ways: as a contest where people fill out predictions and score round by round, or as publish-only where you just run the tournament and tap winners live for people to watch.

This guide covers every setting: defining the field, scoring, how participants fill out and lock brackets, advancing winners each round, tiebreakers, entry fee and organizer cut, and finalizing.

Contest vs. publish-only

Pick the mode when you create the bracket — you can change it later on the Settings tab.

Contest — people fill it out: Participants predict every matchup before it locks and score round-by-round on a live leaderboard. Add an entry fee to make it a fundraiser.
Publish-only — just run the tournament: You publish the bracket and tap winners to advance as games finish; there are no entries or predictions to score, just a live bracket for viewers to follow.
Team entry fee (publish-only): Optional — charge the teams themselves to enter your tournament rather than charging predictors; payments are tracked per team on the Participants tab.

Defining the field

Set these when you create the bracket, then seed the actual teams on the Overview tab.

Format: Single elimination, double elimination, group stage → knockout, or round robin.
Team count: Any number of teams. Non-power-of-2 fields (single elim) get automatic byes for the top seeds; double elimination needs a power-of-2 field (4, 8, 16, 32, 64).
Regions / groups: Split the field into up to 8 regions (single elim / group→knockout) or groups (group→knockout), each named separately — e.g. the four regions of a March Madness bracket.
Advance per group: For group stage → knockout only: how many teams from each group move on (1, 2, or 4). Groups × advance must be a power of 2.
3rd-place game: Optional consolation game between the two semifinal losers (single elimination only).
Seed the teams: On the Overview tab: type a team name into each seed slot, paste a ranked list (auto-placed by standard S-curve seeding across regions), or import a CSV of name/seed/region. Leave bottom seeds blank to create byes.

Scoring & bonuses

Contest mode only — publish-only brackets don’t score anything.

Round points: Points per correct pick, one value per round from round 1 through the championship (default 1 · 2 · 4 · 8 · 16 · 32, doubling each round).
Upset bonus: Optional — reward correctly picking a lower seed to win, on top of the round’s base points.
Tiebreaker: When submitting, each participant also predicts the combined total points scored in the championship game; closest guess breaks ties on the leaderboard.

How participants fill out and lock brackets

Fill out & submit: From the join link, participants tap the team they think wins each game; picks advance automatically through the bracket, then they enter their championship tiebreaker guess and submit.
Picks lock at: Set a lock date/time on the Settings tab (typically tip-off of game 1). After lock, brackets are read-only and points update live as games finish.
Payment at join: If there’s an entry fee, participants pay you through the app’s in-app payment step when they join — you never route money through us or post payment handles in the rules.

Advancing winners each round

Tap winners by hand: On the Overview tab, tap the winning team of any game (optionally with a score) — the bracket, every participant’s predicted-picks view, and the standings update immediately.
Auto-score from resultsPro: For major events whose teams are linked to the games library, one click advances every match with a final score in the library and re-scores every entry; it also runs automatically each day. You can still override any result by hand.
Schedule: Set a start time and location on any match — shown to participants and viewers on the live bracket.
Group standings: For group stage → knockout and round robin formats, a standings table tracks wins as group games are decided, ahead of the knockout rounds.

Entry fee, pot & organizer cut

Bracket Master is free to run — an entry fee and prizes are entirely optional, only in contest mode.

Entry fee: What each contest entry pays at join. The prize pot is entries × fee, minus your organizer cut.
Organizer cutPro: What your program keeps before payouts — a percentage of the pool, a flat total, or a flat amount per entry. Set on the Settings tab; the pot is always shown net of it. Available on Pro Commissioner and Organization; the full pot pays out to winners on Free.
Prizes by place: Set a cash prize per finishing place on the Prizes & payouts card. Ties split the combined prizes for the places they occupy.

Finalizing

Finalize & compute payouts: One tap (re)scores every entry from the final bracket, computes each winner’s payout from the standings and your prize table, and marks the contest settled.
Payout Assist: Once finalized, winners appear in Payout Assist with one-tap pay links so you can mark each payout sent.

FAQ

What’s the difference between contest and publish-only bracket modes?

Contest mode lets participants fill out predictions before the field locks and score round-by-round against everyone else. Publish-only skips predictions entirely — you just run the real tournament and tap winners live so viewers can follow along, with no entries or leaderboard.

Can I run a bracket with an odd number of teams or byes?

Yes — single elimination fields don’t need to be a power of 2; the top seeds automatically get byes into round 2. Double elimination requires a power-of-2 field (4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 teams).

How do I seed a big field quickly?

Paste a ranked list (best team first, one per line) and it auto-places every team by standard S-curve seeding across your regions, or import a CSV with name, seed, and region columns.

How does scoring and the tiebreaker work?

Each correct pick earns that round’s point value (points typically double each round), plus an optional upset bonus for correctly picking a lower seed. If the leaderboard ties, the closest guess on the championship-game total-points tiebreaker wins.

Do I have to manually tap every winner?

No — for teams linked to the games library, auto-score advances every decided match from final scores automatically (and runs daily on its own); you can still tap a result by hand any time, including as an override.

Is Bracket Master free, and how does the organizer cut work?

Yes, it’s free to run with no entry fee. If you add one, the pot is entries × fee minus your organizer cut — a percentage, flat total, or flat per-entry amount set on the Settings tab — and you pay winners through Payout Assist after finalizing.

Ready to run yours?

Set it up in a few minutes — every option here is right there in the wizard.

Start a bracket pool →