Introduction to tournament charts

Tournament charts, often referred to as brackets or tournament brackets, are diagrams used to represent the series of games played during a knockout tournament. These charts are particularly common in sports and games competitions where players or teams are eliminated after each round until a final winner is determined.

Tournament charts are visually intuitive, making it easy for spectators and competitors to understand the current status of the competition, upcoming matches, and the path competitors must take to reach the final.

Anatomy of a tournament chart

Tournament charts typically have a tree-like structure, starting with a larger number of competitors on one side and narrowing down towards the final match at the other end. Each “branch” of the tree represents a match in the tournament.

With Flourish, you can enhance your tournament charts by adding background images, popups and custom colors. You can also highlight a specific team or participant to show their journey through the different stages.

They are also ideal for live sports events and real-time updates!

Use cases and features

The most common type of tournament chart is for single-elimination tournaments. In those, losing competitors are immediately eliminated from the tournament, and winners advance to the next round. This continues until only one competitor or team remains, deemed the overall winner.

Besides sports, tournament charts are used in various contexts, including gaming competitions, debating, academic contests, and any scenario where a knockout-style competition is appropriate.

Data structure for a tournament chart

In Flourish, you can easily create tournament charts without coding – all you need to do is upload a CSV or an Excel sheet with your data.

The first column A should specify the round of the tournament. The next two columns B-C should contain the two competitors in each match.

You can add an extra column D for the winner of each game, or leave this column setting blank – the template will then assume that the game is upcoming. Optionally, you can also provide the scores of each team.

Read our help doc to learn more.

While uploading your data, you’ll notice that the Tournament chart consists of two data sheets – one for Matches and one for Participants. Under Participants, you can add an image for each squad.

Resources

Here are some resources to help you get started with tournament charts:

• Tournament – an overview
  
• How to add images to your visualization
  
• How to add custom content to your popups
  
• Creating a story