Basketball Tournaments
Basketball tournament software that runs the whole weekend
ScoreLM is basketball tournament software for the whole event: pool play into brackets, live scores courtside, a public bracket fans refresh between games, and a gate taking pre-sales, cash, and card. It ran the MCL 2026 tournament and powered the gate at Somali Week 2026, four days and 22 teams across four venues in the Twin Cities. Your tournament site is live about a minute after signup.
Format
Basketball tournament software for pool play into brackets
Most weekend tournaments run the same shape: round robin pools to sort the field, then a single-elimination bracket to crown a champion. The hand-off between the two is where spreadsheets die: pools close Friday night, seeds shift on a tiebreaker, and someone rebuilds the bracket at midnight before an 8 AM tip.
That hand-off is the first thing to test in any basketball tournament software. In ScoreLM, pool standings sort themselves as results come in. When pools close, you seed the bracket from the results and override any slot manually if the tiebreakers get strange. After that, advancement is automatic. Enter a final score and the winner moves to the next round on its own.
Round Robin Pools
Balanced pool schedules where every team plays the same number of games. Standings update the moment a result is entered.
Seeding and Re-Seeding
Seed the bracket off pool results, then override any position by hand before it goes public. Full control when a forfeit or tiebreaker forces it.
Automatic Advancement
Winners slot into the next round the moment a score is final. No manual bracket editing between rounds.
Matchday Scheduling
Every game gets a date, time, and venue. Change one and the public schedule reflects it immediately, with no corrections to post in the group chat.
The full setup walkthrough is in the tournament management docs.
Game Day
A public bracket fans refresh all weekend
Every tournament on ScoreLM gets a public website on its own subdomain. Schedule, bracket, box scores, and team pages all update the moment anything changes. The site is mobile-first and works in any browser, so nobody has to download an app to check whether their cousin's team made the semis.
Score games from a phone or iPad courtside: tap to update the score, control the clock, and everyone watching the bracket sees it in real time. Fans never ask which basketball tournament software you run. They just want the score on their phone to match the scoreboard in the gym.
If you stream your games, embed the YouTube Live feed on the game page with chat, and put a scorebug on the broadcast by pasting an overlay URL into OBS, Streamlabs, or vMix as a browser source. The overlay updates in real time and is controlled from a phone, with player highlights, sponsor pop-ups, and the clock included.
Ticketing
Basketball tournament software has to run the gate too
A weekend tournament is a live event with a real gate. Money comes in online before the first game, then in cash and card at the door all weekend. If those two streams don't land in one system, you'll spend Monday reconciling a shoebox against a spreadsheet.
That's why ticketing is built in rather than bolted on. Most basketball tournament software stops at the bracket; here the same admin that advances your semifinal also tells you exactly what the gate has taken.
Online Pre-Sale
A public checkout page on your tournament's own site. Tickets arrive by email or SMS with a QR code.
Cash and Card at the Door
Door sales run from any phone or iPad, with a separate door price if you want to nudge fans to buy early and keep the line short.
QR Scanning at the Gate
Any volunteer scans with a phone camera. Duplicate scans flag instantly with the original scan time.
Payouts and Refunds
Money goes directly to your organization through Stripe Connect. Refunds are built into the same admin.
Case Study
Proven on real tournament weekends
ScoreLM was built for the Muslim Champions League, a basketball organization with hundreds of competitive players and a national fan base, and it ran the MCL 2026 tournament. The tournament features on this page exist because a real bracket demanded them.
Somali Week runs one of the bigger events on the Twin Cities basketball calendar: four days over the July 4th weekend, 22 teams, group stage Thursday and Friday, playoffs through the weekend, spread across four venues as court availability shifted. Their 2026 gate ran entirely on ScoreLM: online pre-sale before the weekend, cash and card walk-up sales at the door, and QR scanning from volunteers' phones.
The details mattered. Card sales at the door worked by showing the buyer a QR code to pay from their own phone, so no volunteer ever touched a card. Duplicate ticket scans threw a red screen with the original scan time, so nobody waved the same ticket through twice. And when the organizers asked mid-tournament for a cheaper online price to shorten the gate line, a separate door price shipped by Saturday morning.
Somali Week didn't need stadium infrastructure. It needed basketball tournament software a volunteer crew could run from the phones already in their pockets. The full story is in the case study: how Somali Week 2026 ran the gate on ScoreLM.
Running a season as well as a weekend?
Plenty of organizations run both: a holiday tournament that anchors the calendar and a season-long league around it. ScoreLM covers the season side too. The same site handles season schedules, standings, leaderboards, player profiles, and career stats that follow players across seasons and teams, all under one flat subscription with one admin panel and one public site.
If that's you, the deep-dives are at basketball league management software and the basketball stat tracker. And if you run tournaments in more than one sport, ScoreLM also supports soccer today; the sport-agnostic overview is at tournament management software.
Frequently asked questions
Can I re-seed the bracket after pool play?
Yes. Seed the bracket from pool results, then override any position manually before you publish it. That comes in handy when tiebreakers or forfeits make the math weird. Automatic advancement takes over from there: enter a final score and the winner slots into the next round on its own.
Do fans need to download an app to follow the tournament?
No. The schedule, bracket, and box scores live on a mobile-first public website that updates in real time as games are scored. That's on purpose. In basketball tournament software, a link you can drop in a group chat beats asking everyone at the door to install an app.
How do door sales and ticket scanning work?
Volunteers sell cash or card tickets from any phone or iPad and scan QR codes at the gate with a phone camera. Duplicate scans flag immediately with the original scan time. Buyers get tickets by email or SMS, refunds are built in, and payouts go directly to your organization through Stripe Connect. Ticketing is activated per league. Email [email protected] and setup normally takes about an hour, most of it Stripe verifying your organization.
How much does basketball tournament software like this cost?
ScoreLM starts with a free 15-day trial that doesn't require a credit card. Once the trial ends, early bird pricing is $17/month billed annually, which comes to $204 a year. The rate is flat per league with unlimited teams and players, so a tournament with 22 teams pays the same as one with 8.
Run your next tournament on ScoreLM
Signup provisions your tournament site in about a minute, and the free 15-day trial needs no credit card. There's also a live demo at demo.scorelm.com if you'd rather poke around first.