How to start a racket-sport league or ladder with friends

A friendly or social league works the same way in badminton, tennis, padel, table tennis and pickleball. Most use a round robin, a box league or a challenge ladder, and a looser points league suits friends who can't keep to fixtures. The right one depends on how many of you there are and how often you can play.

Box leagues are common at UK tennis and badminton clubs and are growing in padel. In pickleball, a ladder league usually means something else: a session where players are seeded onto ranked courts, and winners move up a court after each match. One-night formats such as Americano decide a winner for an evening, not a season. Our guide to running a doubles rotation covers court ladders and padel formats such as Americano.

• Round robin: everyone plays everyone once. Six players need 15 matches and ten need 45, so it suits smaller groups who can all commit.
• Box league: players are split into boxes of four to six at a similar level, and everyone in a box plays each other over a few weeks. Players arrange their own matches before a deadline. A common scheme gives three points for a win and one for a played loss, but clubs vary. At the end, the top players move up a box and the bottom players move down.
• Challenge ladder: one ranked list that keeps running. You challenge a player a few places above you and take their place if you win.
• Points league: anyone plays anyone when they can, and wins add points over a season. It is the loosest option, and it is how a FinalPoint group works.

A ladder has no fixed fixtures. It keeps running, and the order changes one challenge at a time. Rules vary from club to club, but most ladders work like this.

• You can usually challenge a player two to four places above you.
• If the challenger wins, they take that place and everyone in between drops one. Some ladders simply swap the two players.
• If the challenger loses, the order stays the same.
• Set a deadline to accept and play a challenge, count a no-show as a loss, and leave a gap before the same two players meet again.
• New players start at the bottom, or are placed by level.
• A pyramid ladder puts players in rows, with one at the top and more on each row below, so there are more players you can challenge at any time.

Agree on the rules before the first match and pin them in the group chat. Settle the match format, such as best of three games to 21 in badminton. Agree too what happens when someone cannot play, such as a walkover win or a rearranged match.

A points table rewards playing often. A rating such as Elo rewards who you beat. Either way, limit how much one pairing can count, or someone can climb by beating the same weaker friend every week.

• Numbers: four players are enough to start. A round robin gets long past about ten, and a box league grows by adding boxes.
• Mixed levels: split players into divisions or boxes of similar level, and seed the first table by level.
• Odd numbers: in a round robin, one player sits out each round. This is called a bye, and over the full schedule everyone has one.
• No-shows: set a deadline for each round or box, and decide in advance whether a match not played by then is a walkover or is simply left off.
• Courts: agree who books them and how the cost is split. A simple rule is that the players in each match share the cost of their court.

In FinalPoint a league is a group. Each group plays one sport, fixed when you create it, so to track a second sport you start a second group. Whoever creates the group becomes the chief admin. The Free plan includes three groups in total and two sports, and Rally lifts both limits.

As soon as you create the group in the app, the share options open. Send the link to your group chat. On the web, the group page shows a Share invite link button and a QR code until your first friend joins.

• Later, tap Invite on the group page, or tap the code beside it to copy it. Codes skip look-alike characters such as 0 and O.
• For a QR code in the app, press and hold the group's card on the Groups tab and choose Show QR code.
• A friend who opens the link sees the group and joins with one tap. Someone new to FinalPoint signs up first. In the app they are then added to the group automatically; on the web they tap Accept & Join.
• With only the code, they tap the person-plus button at the top of the Groups tab, or Join by code if they have no groups yet. Then they paste the code into Invite link or code and tap Join group.

Record each match as soon as it ends. Tap Record match on the group page, choose Singles or Doubles, tap players onto each side, enter the scores and tap Record match. Group Match on the Record tab does the same.

A result counts the moment it is saved. Rankings update straight away, and so does EVO unless the match was in a session set to Not rated. The other players get a Match logged notification. Results are dated when they are recorded, so nothing can be backdated. FinalPoint has no walkover result, so don't record a made-up score for a match that wasn't played.

A member can record only matches they played in. The chief admin can record any match, and an admin can record for others inside a session.

To fix a wrong score, tap the pencil on the match. Anyone who played in it, or the chief admin, can fix it for 14 days, with up to three edits by players. A rated match is one that moves EVO. Once any of the players has another rated match recorded in that sport, the result is locked and nobody can change the score, the chief admin included. Until then, the chief admin can still fix it on the web app after the 14 days or the three edits. After it locks, the chief admin can still use Remove from history on the web app, which takes the match off the rankings and leaves everyone's EVO as it is.

In badminton and table tennis, a match of more than one game can only be fixed on the web app.

A group's Rankings page orders its members by points from their matches in the group this season. Every win earns 20 points, with up to 9 more for losing few matches and up to 10 more for your margin, so more wins always means more points. Daily points are capped. Ties go to more wins, then fewer losses, then higher EVO, then more matches played.

In badminton and table tennis, each game counts on the table, so a game you win scores points even in a match you lose.

EVO is each player's own rating for the sport, from 0 to 100, and it is the same in every group they play in. It shows "Cooking" in place of the number until their tenth rated match. Each row on the table also shows the player's EVO change this season.

There is no challenge ladder: beating someone earns you points, not their place. For head-to-head records, the Versus tile shows how you have done against each member. For a fixed round robin, a FinalPoint tournament draws the fixtures for up to 16 players, free, though its matches don't count towards a group's rankings.

Every group starts in Season 1. When a season ends, the points leader becomes season champion, everyone who played is told their finishing place, and the table restarts from zero. Matches are kept and EVO carries on unchanged.

Only the chief admin manages seasons, from Group settings under Season.

• Reset schedule: Every 3 months, Every 6 months, Custom or Manual only (the default). A scheduled reset happens in a daily check soon after midnight UK time, once the season is due.
• Tap Start new season to end the current one at any time.
• Anyone can tap the Seasons tile for past champions and final tables. On the web app, a group's Rankings page shows This Week, This Month and All Time rather than seasons.