Competition Studio
Competition Studio
Competition Studio is a scheduling and competition management tool designed to help clubs organize recreational leagues, tournaments, jamborees, and other competition-based events. Competition Studio works as an extension of a club’s Byga organization, allowing clubs to manage facilities, teams, divisions, scheduling rules, and competition schedules in one place.
The majority of the work in Competition Studio takes place within an individual event. An event contains the information needed to define how the competition will operate, which teams will participate, when and where matches can be played, and how the schedule should be generated.
Accessing Competition Studio
Competition Studio is accessed separately from the primary Byga club application. When logging in, users select Continue with Byga and enter their Byga login credentials. After authentication, Competition Studio identifies the Byga organizations associated with the user and allows the user to select the organization they are working with.
Competition Studio is organization-specific. Competitions and events belong to the selected organization and are not shared across organizations.
Access to competition management is controlled through a global Byga permission for managing Competition Studio. The intended permission model allows clubs to determine which users can manage competition schedules.
Competition Studio Organization Settings
The Settings area provides the foundational information used throughout Competition Studio. At this stage, the primary organization-level configuration is the Facilities Directory.
The Facilities Directory allows a club to define the locations and fields that may be used for competition scheduling. Facilities can be organized in a nested structure, which allows a larger facility to contain smaller playable areas.
For example, a club may have a larger 11v11 field that is divided into multiple 4v4 playing areas. This structure allows Competition Studio to understand the relationship between the larger facility and the smaller playing areas when creating a schedule.
Facilities can be created directly in Competition Studio or imported.
Facility information can also include location information used when Competition Studio considers travel between facilities. When latitude and longitude information is available for facilities, Competition Studio can use that information to estimate travel time between locations when generating a schedule.
Competitions and Events
Competition Studio separates a competition from an event.
A competition acts as the broader organizational label, while an event represents a specific occurrence of that competition. For example, a club may have a competition called Fall Recreational League with an individual event such as Fall Recreational League 2026.
This structure provides a way to organize recurring competitions over time.
When creating an event, the club defines the event name, start date, end date, time zone, and any applicable notes. The event's time zone establishes how scheduled match times are represented.
Once an event has been created, the event becomes the primary workspace for configuring the competition and building its schedule.
Event Format
The event format establishes how matches should be structured and how many matches teams should play.
The format includes the match length and game format used by the teams participating in the event. Clubs can define how long matches should last and how many matches each team is expected to play.
For a league, this may be based on a defined number of matches over the course of the season. For example, a recreational league may specify that every team should play eight matches. The system can also accommodate structures where teams play one another once or multiple times.
The number of matches a team may play in a day can also be defined. A traditional league may use one match per day, while a tournament or jamboree may require teams to play multiple matches in a single day.
At the time of the walkthrough, these settings are applied globally rather than independently for each age group.
Scoring, Standings, and Results
Competition Studio allows clubs to define how results should be handled when an event uses scoring and standings.
Scoring settings can establish the points awarded for wins, draws, and losses. Clubs can determine whether standings are based on total points or points per game and can configure tie-breaking rules.
The competition format also accounts for more detailed scoring considerations, including three-way head-to-head situations, goal differential, goal-difference caps, and the number of goals associated with a forfeit.
Result visibility can also be controlled. A club may choose to keep results visible or hide them from the public-facing schedule. Once divisions are established, visibility can also be handled differently for different divisions. For example, a club may choose to hide results for younger age groups while displaying them for older divisions.
This allows clubs to continue maintaining scores and competition information without necessarily making those results visible to the public.
Capacity Windows
Capacity defines when and where matches can be scheduled.
A Capacity Window represents a period of time during which the club has the ability to play matches. A capacity window can be configured for a specific date range, repeated on particular days, limited to particular times, and associated with one or more facilities.
For example, a recreational league may play every Saturday from 9:00 AM through 3:00 PM from September through November. A capacity window can represent that recurring availability.
Different facilities can have different capacity windows. If a club has a permit for one facility from 9:00 AM through 3:00 PM but a different facility is available at different times, separate capacity windows can be created. When facilities share the same availability, a single capacity window can apply to all of them.
Capacity windows can also define how available time should be used. Clubs can leave a window open for matches to be scheduled anywhere within the available period, or they can establish fixed game slots.
Fixed game slots are useful when matches are expected to begin at predetermined intervals. For example, a club may want games to begin at 9:00, 11:00, and 1:00 rather than allowing a game to begin at any time within the available window.
Capacity windows can also include additional time at the end of each match. This padding can account for transition time between games when fixed game slots are not being used.
Once capacity has been established, Competition Studio displays those available periods within the event schedule so the scheduler can use them when placing matches.
Blackouts
Blackouts are used to identify times when matches cannot be scheduled.
A blackout overrides available capacity. For example, a club may normally have a facility available every Saturday from 9:00 AM through 3:00 PM but may need to close the facility on a particular holiday. A blackout can remove that date from the otherwise available capacity.
Blackouts can also be used for more specific restrictions, such as making a particular field unavailable during a recurring period when another program is using it.
Together, capacity windows and blackouts allow a club to define both when it can play and when it cannot play.
Scheduling Constraints
Scheduling constraints allow clubs to define how matches should be distributed within the available capacity.
A club can specify how it wants matches distributed throughout the available day. For example, matches may be packed toward the beginning of the day, distributed evenly throughout the available period, or concentrated later in the day.
Minimum rest between matches is another important scheduling constraint. In a league, a club may want several days between matches so that a team does not receive games on both Saturday and Sunday when the intention is to have only one match per weekend. In a tournament, the minimum rest period may instead be measured in hours because teams may need to play multiple matches on the same day.
These settings work together with the number of matches per team, matches per day, and available capacity to establish the overall cadence of the competition.
Competition Studio also considers travel between facilities when location information is available. Travel time can be used to prevent a team from being scheduled at locations so close together that it would not have enough time to travel between them.
Coach conflicts can also be considered. Competition Studio can attempt to avoid scheduling overlapping matches for a coach who is associated with multiple teams. When possible, it may place matches close together or at the same facility to reduce unnecessary travel.
Additional constraints can be applied to divisions when certain teams or age groups need to play within specific times or locations. For example, a club may want a particular age group to play only between certain hours or may want older age groups to remain at a particular facility because of referee requirements.
When a match cannot be placed while respecting the configured constraints, Competition Studio leaves the match unplaced rather than ignoring those restrictions.
Managing Teams
Teams can be added to an event in several ways. A club can add a team directly, import a team, or synchronize teams from Byga.
The preferred approach for teams that are already managed in Byga is to synchronize them from the Byga club application. Synchronization is ongoing rather than a one-time import.
When synchronization is initiated, Competition Studio checks the current season's Team Groups in Byga and allows the club to select the team group it wants to mirror. Competition Studio then brings those teams into the event and continues checking for changes.
This is particularly useful while a recreational program is still building its teams. Teams may be added, removed, renamed, or otherwise updated as registration and team organization continue. With synchronization enabled, the club does not need to repeatedly import those changes.
Competition Studio can also contain teams that are not managed in Byga. These teams can exist alongside synchronized Byga teams. The walkthrough specifically identifies external teams as a use case for leagues involving teams from other programs.
Competition Studio does not manage player rosters. Teams can therefore exist in Competition Studio without players being present.
A coach is not required in order to create a schedule.
Divisions
Once teams have been added, they can be organized into divisions.
Divisions can represent structures such as an age group or gender. Teams can be selected in batches and assigned to an existing division, or a new division can be created while assigning the teams.
Competition Studio supports multiple divisions within the same event, allowing a club to organize its teams according to the structure of the competition.
Divisions can also be divided into pools when the competition requires a pool-based structure.
Pools and Cross-Pool Play
Pools allow a division to be separated into groups of teams.
Once a division has been divided into pools, teams can be assigned to specific pools. The system can support traditional pool play where teams play within their own pool, as well as cross-pool play where teams from different pools play one another while maintaining separate standings.
This provides flexibility for tournament-style competition structures where the initial pool configuration and subsequent matchups need to be handled differently.
Knockout Structures
Competition Studio can also add knockout stages to a division.
Depending on the number of teams and the selected structure, the competition can progress from pool or division play into a final, semifinals and final, or quarterfinals, semifinals, and final.
The available knockout structure is based on the number of teams available. For example, a competition with eight teams can progress through quarterfinals, semifinals, and a final.
Knockout structures are particularly applicable to tournament or end-of-season formats where teams advance based on their results.
Generating the Schedule
After the event has been configured with its teams, divisions, competition structure, facilities, capacity, and scheduling constraints, the schedule can be generated.
The Generate Schedule function uses the information configured throughout the event to attempt to place the competition's matches.
Competition Studio considers the number of matches, capacity windows, blackouts, rest requirements, travel, coach conflicts, facility availability, and division-specific constraints when generating the schedule.
The generated schedule identifies which matches were successfully placed and which matches could not be placed.
Unplaced Matches
Not every match can necessarily be placed if the available capacity does not accommodate all of the configured requirements.
Competition Studio identifies unplaced matches so the club can review them and determine what is preventing them from being scheduled. The system can indicate the matches that remain unplaced and provide information about the scheduling issue.
Unplaced matches may result from insufficient capacity or from the interaction of capacity and scheduling constraints. A club can review the configured capacity and constraints and make adjustments before generating the schedule again.
Competition Studio is intended to help the club understand where the schedule cannot satisfy all of the requirements rather than simply placing matches in locations or times that violate the rules the club established.
Manual Schedule Adjustments
After the schedule has been generated, individual matches can be adjusted manually.
Clubs can modify the date, time, or field for an existing match. Batch actions can also be used when multiple schedule changes need to be made.
Competition Studio provides a timeline view for reviewing matches across facilities. Capacity windows appear as the available scheduling areas, while scheduled matches appear within those windows.
Matches can be moved within the timeline, allowing the club to make manual adjustments while still receiving feedback from the system about whether the proposed placement is valid.
The system is designed to identify conflicts rather than allowing a manual change to silently violate scheduling requirements.
Exporting the Schedule to Byga
Once the schedule has been created and finalized, the schedule can be exported for use in Byga.
The current workflow uses an export to bring the schedule into the Byga club application.
Public-Facing Schedules
After the schedule has been completed, the event's Overview provides the option to enable a public-facing schedule.
When enabled, Competition Studio creates a link to the public-facing event page. The page can display the event's divisions and scheduled matches, and users can navigate into individual team pages.
Public visibility can be controlled according to the event's configured result-visibility settings. A club may choose to publish the schedule while keeping results hidden, or it may choose to display results and standings where appropriate.
For tournament-style events, entering scores can also update the competition structure. As results are recorded, standings can be updated and the system can determine which teams advance through knockout rounds.
A public-facing schedule is optional. Clubs may instead use the schedule through their existing Byga team calendars without enabling a separate public-facing event page.
Built-In Help and Guidance
Competition Studio will include self-help guidance directly within the tool.
These in-tool resources are intended to provide additional guidance while users are working within the feature, making it easier to understand settings and functionality without having to leave Competition Studio.
The in-tool guidance provides an additional layer of support alongside the Byga Help Center and Competition Studio documentation.