SportsML: Tournaments
Tournaments are one of the more complex things to mark up. Not only are there many different tournament structures but you may choose to mark up a portion or a tournament in its entirety.
Examples of different kinds of tournaments would be: Olympics biathlon, Tour de France, UEFA Champions League, The Golden League for Athletics, The PGA Tour, World Cup Skiing, an Italian Serie A football season and the World Curling Championships. Even a North American professional sports league season could be rendered as a tournament involving stages such as pre-season, regular season and post-season.
You might also decide only to send portions of a tournament. Some providers might want to send the entire PGA season in a doc, thereby transmitting the whole structure. Others might wish to only send one stage at a time eg. The Masters.
This page will guide you through the best practices in marking up a tournament.
Tournament elements
The following are the most important tournament elements, from broad to narrow.
| Element name | Element description |
|---|---|
| tournament |
The root element for the tournament portion you are representing. |
| tournament-division |
This is a mandatory element under tournament and an optional one under tournament-stage. This marks the level for which there is a single overall award, toward which the tournament events culminate. Generally this is a division by sport and/or gender and the award would be a cup, a medal, a placement in the standings, etc. For example, in World Cup Alpine Skiing is divided by gender within that division are stages at different locations (Innsbruck, Whistler, etc.) and within each stage are divisions by discipline (Downhill, Slalom, Giant Slalom and Super G). For a tennis tournament the divisions could combine gender and award eg. Women's doubles, Men's singles, etc. Note: the division referred to is the division within a tournament, not that within a league (such as the Eastern division of the American League of Major League Baseball). |
| tournament-stage |
Stages can be the different locations thoughtout a season, for example in PGA, Formula 1, Tour de France or World Cup Skiing. They can also be the successive winnowing stage of a competition. For example in the FIFA World Cup: qualifier, groups and knockout. There is a stage-type vocabulary with which to classify stages. The terms are: hosted, group, single-group, series, single-elimination, home-and-home and qualification. These are explain in the documentation of the core vocabulary. |
| tournament-round | A round is a division of the competition within a stage. It is generally the last divisible level of a tournament into which actual comptetive events (sports-event in SportsML) are organized. In North American professional sports it could be a single series or it could be the components for a total time score as in World Cup bobsleigh. In the FIFA World Cup knockout stage, the rounds would be round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, bronze and champion. In Champions league it could be the same of the "legs" of the home-and-home competitions. The same typing vocabulary mentioned above for stages can be applied to rounds. |
|
sports-event |
The actual competition. Optional if it's a field of individuals playing in rounds, as with golf. |
Examples of different structures
Below are examples of diferent tournament styles and how to mark them up.
| Tournament name | Tournament style | SportsML Xpath | Sample and Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summer Olympics, Athletics | Two disciplines of athletics: 100m and shot-put. For a multi-sport tournament such as Olympics, it is recommended to create one tournament doc per sport. | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-stage/tournament-round |
Sample
Each discipline is a division, leading to a single medal. Each division is comprised of rounds in elimination bracket style. All athletics disciplines could be added to this. |
| FIFA World Cup | Begins with a groups stage followed by elimination stage. Each stage contains rounds. | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-stage/tournament-round |
Sample
Use <tournament-stage> to separate the two stages. Each group is a round. In the elimination stage, each phase (Group of 16, semi-finals, etc.) is a round. |
| UEFA Champions League | First a group stage, then knockout, followed by stage comprising final match. (Sample has just knockout and final.) | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-stage/tournament-round |
Sample
The knockout stage has a type "home-and-home". Each "leg" of the home-and-home series is a round and each of the two events is numbered and given a series index. The final match is a different stage because of the change in type (single-elimination). It is placed within a round element because there is no further division of events. |
| Scandanavian Domestic elite Soccer | Each match is assigned to a round. In each round all teams play one game so the number of games in the round should equal the number of teams divided by two. Teams compete for placement in the final standings. A common format across Europe. | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-round | Norwegian Soccer
Swedish Soccer Each game week is represented as a round. Number of events should be total number of teams divided by two. A standing under tournament-division shows the running total in the competition. |
| PGA Tour: Bob Hope Classic | Rounds within stages. | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-stage/tournament-round | Sample
The 2011 event required a tie-breaker stage. Regular 4-round match plus tie-breaker are rendered as stages. |
| Tennis: Davis Cup | A series of rounds in classic bracket style. | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-round | Sample
No real stages other than the advancement rounds, therefore tournament-stage is not necessary. |
| Luge: Singles World Championship | A single event award among the top seasonal performers. | tournament/tournament-division | Sample
No need to render stages and rounds because the event transpires in a single event. |
| Biathlon: World Cup Season | A number of contests through the winter at different locations. The season standings leader wins the cup. | tournament/tournament-division/tournament-round | Sample
Each newly located contest is a stage. Each portion of the single hosted contest (eg. 20 km, 12.5 km pursuit) is a <sports-event>. |
Some tournament markup guidelines
Divisions
Divisions are required under the tournament element. But why, if there is only one division? This was a design decision to maintain consistency across instances in order to convey that the structure beneath progresses toward a single award. Often the high-level division is important (eg. a two-gender tennis tournament) but even when it's not (eg. a men's hockey tournament with a single gender and discipline) it's a good idea to maintain consistent structure.
Multi-sport events
It is not recommended to mark up an entire tournament like the Olympics. The highest level you should begin with is the major sport category (Alpine Skiing, Cycling, Athletics, etc.). You would then use two nested divisions: first by gender and then by discipline.
Group phases
The group phase of a tournament such as the FIFA World Cup can be represented as comprising multiple stages, one for each group, even though the groups play in parallel to one another.
Tournaments and Standings
Standings for different portions of a tournament should be placed at the appropriate level. For example, the overall standings for a World Cup season (like biathlon in the samples above) would be placed beneath the top division level (the gender divider). Standings for any particular contest would be placed beneath the round designating the hosted contest.
Rounds and Stages
Details can be added to rounds and stages, such as the number of games in a series -- both minimum and maximum for a "best-of" series. The number of rounds and stages can also be specified. To identify a series within a round use the "series-index" attribute of <event-metadata>.