Where Can You Make Your Own Darts Tournament Brackets?
How to Create Your Own Darts Tournament Bracket Online for Free
Fancy running your own darts tournament but don’t want the hassle of drawing brackets by hand, building spreadsheets or trying to keep track of dozens of players?
Whether it’s an eight-player knockout at home, a Friday night competition down the local, a club tournament or something involving 32 or even 64 players, having a proper tournament bracket makes everything easier.
The good news is you don’t necessarily need specialist paid tournament software to do it.
Digital Darts Online has launched a free Darts Tournament Creator that allows users to build and manage darts tournament brackets online with up to 64 players.
It includes straight knockout and round robin competitions, custom match formats, bulk player entry, live tournament sharing and data export — with even more tournament formats planned.
We’ve taken a closer look at what it can do and why it could be a handy tool for anyone planning their next darts competition.
Where Can You Create a Darts Tournament Bracket Online?
There are plenty of generic tournament bracket generators online, but darts has its own requirements.
Tournament organisers don’t just need to know who plays who.
You might want to specify whether matches are Best Of or Race To, decide how many legs are being played, run a round robin rather than a knockout, organise players into multiple groups or let everyone follow the tournament as results come in.
That’s where a dedicated Darts Tournament Creator becomes considerably more useful than a basic bracket generator.
The tool from Digital Darts Online has been designed specifically with darts competitions in mind.
Free users can create tournaments containing up to 64 players, making it suitable for everything from a small competition between friends to a much larger pub or club tournament.
Create a Knockout Darts Tournament for Free
For many of us, when someone says “darts tournament”, a straight knockout bracket is the first format that comes to mind.
Two players meet.
The winner goes through.
The loser is out.
Keep going until two players reach the final and one is crowned champion.
It’s simple, competitive and perfect for a darts night.
With the Digital Darts Online tournament tool, you can generate a straight knockout darts bracket online rather than having to draw one yourself.
That means you can create brackets for tournaments such as:
- 8-player darts tournaments
- 16-player darts tournaments
- 32-player darts tournaments
- Larger competitions with up to 64 players
Once your players have been entered, the tournament structure can be generated for you.
For someone running a pub or club tournament, that can remove one of the more tedious parts of getting everything organised.
Choose Between Best Of and Race To Matches
A particularly useful feature is that the tournament isn’t limited to simply generating names on a bracket.
You can also configure how the darts matches themselves will be played.
Tournament organisers can choose between Best Of and Race To formats, with options ranging from 1 to 20 legs.
Race To
A Race To match is exactly what it sounds like.
If you’re playing Race to 3, for example, the first player to win three legs takes the match and progresses.
Depending on the competition you’re organising, you can select anything from Race to 1 through to Race to 20.
Shorter formats could be useful when you’ve got a lot of players and limited time, while longer races give players more opportunity to settle into their matches.
Best Of
You can also select a traditional Best Of format.
A Best of 5 match, for example, gives players a maximum of five legs, with the first player to three taking the match.
Again, the tournament creator provides options from 1 through to 20 legs.
That makes it much more darts-specific than simply generating a generic tournament tree.
What About a Round Robin Darts Tournament?
This is where things get particularly interesting.
Digital Darts Online hasn’t limited its Darts Tournament Creator to straight knockout competitions.
There’s also a fully functioning round robin tournament option.
Round robin can be a much better format when the objective is to give everyone more darts.
In a straight knockout competition, you can organise a tournament, turn up, lose your first match and that’s your evening over as far as the competition is concerned.
With a round robin, players instead compete against the other players in their group.
This makes it a great option for social competitions, club events and tournaments where you want everyone to get a reasonable amount of competitive darts.
Create One or Multiple Round Robin Groups
The round robin system isn’t restricted to putting everybody into one enormous group either.
Organisers can choose between one group or multiple groups.
For a smaller tournament, you might want every player competing within a single group.
With more players, you could instead split the field across several groups.
This creates plenty of possibilities for pub and club competitions.
You could have groups competing simultaneously across different boards, keep track of the standings and see which players are performing best within each section.
The current system handles the round robin stage itself, but Digital Darts Online also has plans to take this further.
More on that shortly.
Adding 64 Players Without Typing Them One by One
Anyone who has organised a tournament knows there are certain jobs that sound trivial until you’re actually doing them.
Entering player names is one of them.
Adding eight names individually isn’t much of a problem.
Adding 32 starts getting tedious.
Adding 64?
You probably want a faster option.
Fortunately, the tournament creator includes a Bulk Add Players feature.
Instead of entering every competitor separately, organisers can type or paste an entire player list into the bulk entry box, with one player per line.
Already collected all your entries elsewhere?
Copy them.
Paste them.
Create the tournament.
It’s a small feature, but potentially a significant time-saver for anyone organising a larger darts competition.
Let Players Follow Your Darts Tournament Live
Here’s another feature we particularly like.
One of the most frustrating things about running a tournament is the constant stream of questions.
“Who am I playing next?”
“Who’s through?”
“What round are we on?”
“Who won that match?”
“Who could I get in the semi-final?”
With a handful of players, it’s manageable.
With 32 or 64 people in the room, keeping everybody informed becomes a job in itself.
Digital Darts Online has come up with a useful solution.
When a tournament is scheduled as Live, the organiser can share a view-only link with players and the wider community.
This means other people can follow what’s happening in the competition without being given access to the controls used to manage it.
Share Your Tournament With Friends and the Darts Community
The live link could be useful beyond the people physically playing in the tournament.
If your pub, club, league or online darts community is running an event, you could share the view-only tournament with people who want to follow the action.
That could include players waiting for their next match, club members, friends and family or people following the event remotely.
Rather than continually sending screenshots of the latest bracket, you’ve got a central tournament view that people can check.
For communities running regular competitions, that’s a very welcome feature.
Keep Track of Your Round Robin Standings
For round robin tournaments, the tool goes beyond simply listing the fixtures.
The tournament interface includes standings alongside the matches, making it much easier to see how each group is developing.
As results are added, organisers can keep track of the competition rather than trying to calculate everything separately.
If you’ve ever tried running a group competition with a sheet of paper, calculator and several people asking you for the table at the same time, you’ll probably understand the appeal.
Having the fixtures, results and standings together makes for a far cleaner tournament setup.
Export Your Tournament Data
Another handy inclusion is the ability to export your tournament data.
Not every tournament organiser will need this, but it could be particularly useful for clubs and communities running regular events.
Rather than your tournament information being something you only have access to while the competition is happening, the export option gives you the opportunity to retain the data afterwards.
That could help with club records, previous competition results or simply keeping your own archive of tournaments.
Who Could Use the Darts Tournament Creator?
You certainly don’t need to be running a major open tournament to make use of it.
In fact, we’d argue that some of the best uses are likely to be much smaller competitions.
It could work well for:
- A tournament between friends
- Friday night pub competitions
- Darts club tournaments
- Club championships
- Knockout cups
- League competitions
- Charity darts events
- Workplace tournaments
- Online darts communities
- Round robin leagues or competitions
- Larger events with up to 64 competitors
Even if you’ve only got eight players, there’s something much more satisfying about having a proper bracket and seeing your route through to the final.
And if you’re dealing with 32 or 64 competitors, having a tournament management tool goes from being a nice extra to something that can make organising the event considerably easier.
Can You Really Create a Darts Tournament for Free?
Yes.
At the time of writing, free Digital Darts Online users can create tournaments containing up to 64 players.
That’s a substantial number for a free tournament creator and should cover the requirements of many home, pub, club and community competitions.
You can choose between the available knockout and round robin formats, configure your match format and create the tournament online.
For someone searching for a free darts bracket generator, it’s certainly worth trying.
More Darts Tournament Formats Are Coming
What’s available now also appears to be the start rather than the finished product.
Digital Darts Online has already revealed that more tournament functionality is planned.
Two additions in particular could make the system considerably more powerful.
Double Elimination Darts Tournaments
The first is double elimination.
With a normal knockout competition, one defeat and you’re finished.
Double elimination gives competitors a second chance, with a player generally needing to lose twice before being eliminated from the tournament.
It’s an interesting format for more competitive events because one bad performance doesn’t necessarily destroy a player’s entire tournament.
Digital Darts Online says double elimination is currently in the pipeline for its tournament system.
Round Robin Groups Into a Knockout Tournament
The second planned feature could be even more useful for larger competitive events.
The plan is to eventually connect round robin groups with a knockout stage.
In other words, you could potentially create something along the lines of:
Group Stage → Qualifiers → Knockout Stage → Final
Imagine running a 32-player competition where players are initially divided into groups.
Everyone gets several games during the group stage, the best-performing players qualify, and those players then progress into a traditional knockout bracket.
It’s a format that gives competitors more darts while retaining the excitement of knockout matches towards the business end of the competition.
Once introduced, this could make the tournament creator particularly attractive for clubs and organisers wanting something more sophisticated than a basic bracket generator.
Is It Better Than Making a Darts Bracket Yourself?
You can, of course, still create a darts tournament the old-fashioned way.
Grab a sheet of paper.
Write everyone’s names down.
Draw some lines.
Try to remember who is playing who.
Cross things out when somebody drops out.
Then spend the next few hours answering questions about who’s playing next.
For a tiny competition, that might still be perfectly adequate.
But once you start adding more players — or want round robin groups, standings and a live bracket — using a dedicated tournament creator makes considerably more sense.
The biggest advantage isn’t necessarily any individual feature.
It’s having everything in one place.
Your players.
Your format.
Your fixtures.
Your bracket.
Your results.
And a way for everyone else to follow what’s going on.
How to Create Your Own Darts Tournament Online
If you’re planning a tournament, the process has been kept relatively straightforward.
Add your players, choose the type of tournament you want to run, configure your match format and generate the competition.
For larger player lists, use the bulk entry option rather than typing every name individually.
If you want your players or community to follow along, publish the tournament as live and share the view-only link.
From there, it’s over to the players.
Get them to the oche and start throwing.
A Useful Free Tool for Darts Players and Tournament Organisers
At DartsMarket, we’re always interested in tools and ideas that make playing and organising darts easier.
The new Digital Darts Online Darts Tournament Creator ticks quite a few boxes.
Being able to create a free tournament for up to 64 players is already useful, but the combination of knockout tournaments, round robin groups, configurable leg formats, bulk player entry and live sharing makes it considerably more interesting than a basic bracket generator.
The planned features are worth keeping an eye on too.
Double elimination will introduce another popular competition format, while linking round robin groups directly into knockout stages could make the system suitable for some seriously competitive tournaments.
Where Can I Make My Own Darts Tournament Bracket?
So, back to the original question:
Where can you make your own darts tournament bracket online?
If you’re looking for something built specifically around darts, Digital Darts Online’s free Darts Tournament Creator is well worth a look.
You can currently create tournaments for up to 64 players, choose between straight knockout and round robin competitions, configure Race To or Best Of matches, quickly bulk-add your players and share the tournament with your community when it goes live.
Whether you’re organising eight mates around one dartboard or putting together a much larger club competition, it provides a simple way to get the admin sorted and concentrate on the important part:
Playing darts.
Try the Digital Darts Online Tournament Creator
Want to put it to the test?
Head over to Digital Darts Online and try the Darts Tournament Creator for your next competition.
Create your players, choose your format, build the tournament and see who makes it all the way to the final.
