One event is run by a person. Five events across three states are run by a system, and the change is not the volume — it is that you now have directors making decisions you are not in the room for. What has to be central is anything a team experiences as "your brand": the rules, the entry flow, the refund policy and the money. What has to be local is anything that depends on standing on the field.
Get that line wrong in either direction and the network fails in a predictable way. Too central and your directors cannot run their own weekend. Too local and a team has five different experiences under one name.
What changes when you go from one event to five?
Three things, and none of them is the schedule.
You stop being the quality control. With one event you catch everything because you are there. With five you catch nothing directly, so quality has to be structural — the same rules, the same entry flow, the same refund policy, enforced by how the system works rather than by you watching.
Your brand becomes a promise you are not personally keeping. A team that had a bad weekend at your Ohio event does not distinguish it from your Michigan one. The reputational unit is now the network.
Money gets complicated. Who collects, who holds it, who pays the umpires, and when a local director gets paid are suddenly real questions with tax consequences.
The thing that does not change: scheduling, field assignment and running the weekend are still local jobs, and centralising them is the classic mistake — a director in another state cannot tell you whether the field is playable.
What has to be central and what has to be local?
| Central | Local | |
|---|---|---|
| Brand and site | Event pages under one domain, one visual identity | Local event detail, photos, local sponsors |
| Rules and format | Age cutoffs, tiebreakers, run rules, roster rules | Nothing — a local variation is a support ticket waiting to happen |
| Entry flow | One registration experience, one set of fields | Which divisions this event offers |
| Pricing | Fee structure and discount rules | The number, within a band you set |
| Refund and rainout policy | The policy | The call on the day |
| Money | Where entry fees land, and the payout schedule | Local cash expenses, reimbursed |
| Scheduling | The template and the constraints | The actual grid — it depends on the fields |
| The weekend | Nothing | Everything |
| Sponsors | National or multi-event partners | Local businesses, priced locally |
| Results and standings | One place, so a team's record follows them | Entering them |
The row to look at twice is rules and format. Every local director will want one exception, and each one sounds reasonable on its own. The cumulative effect is that a team cannot predict what your event is, which is the one thing a network is supposed to guarantee.
How do you handle money across directors?
There are two structures and you should pick deliberately, with an accountant, before your second event.
Central collection, local payout. All entry fees land in the network's account. Local directors submit expenses and are paid a fee or a share. Cleaner books, consistent refund handling, and it makes the brand promise real — a team's money relationship is with the network, not with whoever happened to run that weekend. It also means your cash flow carries every event's costs.
Local collection, central fee. Each director collects into their own account and remits a share or a per-team fee. Better for local cash flow and it suits an affiliate model where directors are genuinely independent. It makes consistency harder to enforce and makes a refund dispute somebody else's problem to fund.
Whichever you choose, three things need writing down:
- Who is contractually responsible to the team. A refund dispute finds this out fast.
- When a local director gets paid, and whether it is before or after reconciliation.
- Whether local directors are contractors or employees in their state. This is a real question with real consequences and it is not one to guess at.
On our platform entry fees land in the account the event owner controls, and we take 0% of your registrations — you keep your own payment processor, so your card fees are whatever Stripe charges you, same as anyone. We just do not add a platform cut on top. Which of your accounts that is remains your structural decision, not ours.
What does each director need their own login to do?
The principle: a local director should be able to run their weekend without asking you for anything, and should not be able to change anything that is network-wide.
A local director needs to:
- Build and publish their own schedule
- Assign fields and make changes on the day
- Enter results and advance brackets
- Message their own teams, and only their own teams
- See who has paid for their event
- Add and manage their local sponsors
A local director should not be able to:
- Change the rules, tiebreakers or age cutoffs
- Change the refund or rainout policy
- Change the entry form's structure
- See or message another event's teams
- Move money
That split is what per-role permissions are actually for, and it is the difference between delegating and hoping.
When is it a network rather than a series?
A useful test: if a team asks "what are the rules?", is there one answer?
A series is several events run by the same person under one name. The consistency comes from it being the same person. This is most multi-event operations and there is nothing wrong with it.
A network is several events run by different people under one name, where the consistency comes from the structure. This is a different business — it has contracts, a brand standard, a money structure and a support obligation, and it usually needs a different platform underneath it because the permission model is the product.
The transition is usually forced by a single event you were not at going badly. That is the moment the structural work stops being optional.
Questions directors ask
How many events before this becomes necessary?
Less about count than about presence. Two events you personally run is a series. One event somebody else runs on your behalf is already a network, because that is the first time your brand is in someone else's hands.
Should local directors be employees or contractors?
Ask an accountant in the relevant state — the answer varies and the consequences of getting it wrong are not small. What we can say is that the more you centralise rules, pricing and money, the more the relationship starts to look like employment, so the two decisions are connected.
Can teams have one account across every event?
They should. A team that re-enters its roster and contacts at every event experiences five separate vendors, not one network. A single team record across events is one of the more visible benefits of running on one system.
How do standings work across events?
Decide early whether you are running a points race across the network, because it changes what you have to capture at every event and it is very hard to backfill. If you want it, capture the results consistently from event one.
What tier covers this?
A multi-event operation with several directors is what our Pro Platform and Enterprise tiers exist for — multiple programs under one organisation, per-role logins, and a site that carries the whole network rather than one event. Pricing is published, and every figure is the start of a range.
Related: how to run a 60-team tournament for the single-event version of these jobs, and collecting entry fees for the money mechanics. More for tournament organisations.