Champion of champions padel: the format and how to run it

How it works

1. Drawn into leagues. Everybody is drawn into 2, 4, 8 or 16 small leagues, at random or by level.
2. A new partner each week. Inside your league you partner each of the others once. Your points are yours, so the table is per person.
3. The top two pair up. When a league is played, first and second team up as a pair. The table picks them, nobody has to.
4. The pairs knock out. The pairs play a knockout. Two leagues make two pairs, so they go straight to one final; four leagues give semi finals and a final; eight give quarter finals.

Free tool: Padel bracket generator. Make the knockout bracket for your finalists.

Why it works for a first season

A new group rarely knows who is strong. Rotating partners means nobody is stuck with a mismatched pair, everyone plays with and against most of their league, and the table sorts people by what actually happened. The knockout at the end gives the season a finals night.

How many players

Sixteen to thirty two players is a comfortable size. Leagues of about eight give seven matchdays each before the knockout.

Worked examples: leagues, matchdays and games

These come from the Padeliga draw engine, with the players split into two leagues as evenly as the numbers allow. Inside each league everyone plays the same number of games; when a league’s size does not divide by four, players take turns to sit out a matchday.

Then the final: with two leagues, first and second in each league team up and the two pairs play one match. At one matchday a week, 26 players is a 13 week league stage and then the final.

When the leagues cannot be the same size, say 25 players as 13 and 12, the bigger league needs more matchdays (13 against 11). Rather than have one league finish weeks early, give the smaller league a little longer per matchday so both finish on the same date and the final follows. Padeliga does this for you. To try other numbers, use the free round robin generator, which uses the same engine, and the bracket generator for a final stage with four or more pairs.

Things to decide first

• Random or by level. Seeding by level puts the strongest together, which makes each league closer but the knockout more predictable.
• Tie-breakers for the table, since two players can finish level on points. See league tables and tie-breakers.
• The knockout dates, one round at a time, and whether the final is a club night.

How Padeliga does it

Champion of champions is one of Padeliga’s five styles. Staff pick the number of leagues; members are drawn into them at random, or by Playtomic level if the league asks for one. Partners rotate automatically inside each league, the table picks the top two, and the knockout draws itself from the tables, round by round, as each result is confirmed. Members join on their own from the poster, and staff follow every league and the knockout on one screen in the club console. Answer the six setup questions with members who sign up on their own and want a knockout at the end, and Padeliga suggests a champion of champions: groups, then a knockout. How the knockout part works, and what it does not do, is on the padel knockout app for clubs.

Running leagues at a club? See padel league management for clubs, what to compare in padel league software and how to run a padel league.

Questions