Playoffs

Playoffs are a core part of the league experience, and we're proud to offer our own version of the classic showdown. To best understand what's below, make sure you're first familiar with what a "round" is and how our subscription works (read more here).

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How it works

Every third round, all AREENA leagues run playoffs during normal match times. The main difference from a normal round is that when matches are released, you'll only see one match with a defined opponent and time. The rest will show up as TBD, since we obviously don't know who is going to play who after the first match.

You and your team will be given a seed based on your ranking, and the bracket will be set up in a standard fashion (in an 8 team playoff, #1 would play #8, for example). The number of teams in your league will determine exactly how things break down, but there are a couple guarantees:

1. You will still play a match every week in the round. If you aren't playing in the tournament (maybe because of a bye or because you dropped out), then you'll play a normal regular season game.
2. You will play at least 1 match within the tournament. If you lose your first one, then (depending on the league) you may play in a consolation bracket.

The champions will receive an AREENA t-shirt, a trophy, recognition on our social media, and a corvette. Ok, so maybe not a corvette. But definitely the other things.

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Guidelines & Rules

1. The Fair Play Rule: the competitiveness of your team cannot materially improve going in to playoffs. This is so you can't bring in that one friend that tomahawk dunks to dominate a Bronze level basketball playoff. If someone on another team complains to us about your team, and you've brought one or more new players that make your team much better than you were in previous rounds, you will potentially be disqualified from the playoff. This will be dealt with on a case by case basis by the AREENA team.
2. New teams who have not played in the previous two rounds will not be in the playoffs. Instead, they will just play regular season matches.
3. While we want to honor your scheduling preferences, this is often impossible in a playoff. We'll do our best, but it's inevitable that you'll need to be a bit more flexible.
4. Matches will not be able to end in a tie (of course). We'll have an appropriate overtime period depending on your sport.
5. All standard AREENA rules for your sport will still apply.

That's it! If you still have questions, you can always reach out, but we hope this answers most of them. Good Luck!