How to Make an Esports Tournament Website?

Want a great esports website builder guide to help you build an esports tournament website? You’ve come to the right place.

Before diving into the software development details for an esports tournament website, let’s look at some of the essential features of an esports website. This will give you an idea of what type of esports tournament website you want to develop for your esports audience.

Features for a website for esports tournaments

A website for gaming tournaments should have the following features:

• Users should be able to view match reports of online tournaments.
• Users should be able to find online gaming tournament schedules easily.
• Esports enthusiasts should be able to use the website to enlist new enthusiasts and players.
• Players and the biggest esports tournament organizers need easy ways to create and run their tournaments.
• Comparing players and teams is important in the esports community. Leaderboards are popular for this purpose. Users should easily be able to create leaderboards.
• Multiplayer online battle arena is the most-watched genre of esports. Make sure to incorporate this feature.
• Prize pool crowdfunding feature for esports leagues.
• Social networking is a vital part of esports events. Any esports website should allow users to create their own social networks. Chat features are needed. Forums and activity feeds are also important features.
• Users should be able to buy esports-related merchandise.
• A simple yet elegant UI is key.
• Finally, it goes without saying that in today’s era, a website should be performant on all the operating systems it is released for.

Do you want to understand more about these features? Visit the website of Esports.net and check it out.

Other examples include:

Visit Dojo

Visit Dojo is a new esports hub for gamers to connect with their favorite streamers through tournaments & challenges. You can create your own Dojo and can access social network features to engage and grow a community for the purpose of monetization.

The platform covers Fortnite, Call of Duty, and League of Legends competitions. Other features include the ability for players to connect their game accounts and view live stat tracking, as well as anti-cheat features to capture all types of soft and hard cheats, etc.

Visit the platform to learn more about the latest features that you should include in your new application. 

How to create an esports tournament website without coding

What if you are an entrepreneur in a hurry and don’t have a skilled web development team? Well, you still can build and launch your website for esports tournaments. I will now explain how to build an esports games website without coding.

No-coding option #1: Esports website builder

As you may have guessed, this option requires using a tournament website builder.

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You can try the following options:

A. esportwebs: An esports website builder

Visit the eSportwebs.com website. Esportwebs offers an esports website builder. You can painlessly incorporate all key features of an esports website, for e.g., tournament scheduling, social networking, match reports, viewing existing tournament schedules, leaderboard, etc. using this website builder.

You must have a robust management portal for your website. Esportswebs offers useful templates for building esports websites. You need to sign up with it to create your site. Contact them via their homepage for more details.

B. MotoCMS: A CMS (Content Management System) to build an esports gaming website

MotoCMS is a CMS (Content Management System). It offers the MotoCMS eSports website builder. That’s a hassle-free way to build your esports tournament or esports team website.

MotoCMS offers the following features:

• A drag-and-drop page builder;
• Useful esports website templates;
• Social media integration;
• A comprehensive set of modules and widgets;
• Responsive and mobile-friendly design;
• All key features needed in esports tournament websites;
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-friendly features;
• Comprehensive support.

Check out the MotoCMS pricing plans.

Zero-coding option #2: WordPress

The popular open-source ‘Content Management System’ (CMS) WordPress is another good option for entrepreneurs without access to skilled developers.

You can build a basic esports tournaments website using WordPress themes and plugins. Themes control the look and feel of the website, whereas plugins address functionalities. WordPress is good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Which WordPress theme can you use?

PixieFreak is a good WordPress theme for esports tournament websites. The theme has robust customization options. You can use the smart widgets that this theme offers.

You can use the customization options offered by this theme to help users present esports teams, for example. These features enable you to organize tournaments. You can create esports communities too.

The theme has good integration with WooCommerce, i.e., a popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. This enables you to set up an online shop and sell esports merchandise. It’s easy to customize the colors. It’s a responsive theme.

Which WordPress plugin can you use?

I also recommend the “MSP – MultiSport & eSport” WordPress plugin. Managing esports content is easy when using this useful tool. You can incorporate powerful esports statistics with the help of this plugin. The plugin also comes bundled with the popular Visual Composer WordPress page builder. You can easily integrate it into your website, thanks to excellent documentation.

Which web hosting provider can you use?

With this approach, you will need to buy web hosting.

You have several choices, however, we recommend InMotion Hosting.

The company enjoys a very good reputation with experts. It’s a highly optimized managed WordPress hosting platform. You can buy a premium plan from InMotion Hosting, which includes free domain name registration.

The fees to make an esports platform with this approach include hosting, theme, and plugin. You will need web designers. However, you don’t need to hire developers.

How to develop an esports tournament website with custom-coding

In order to offer unique features that really make your site really stand out, you will need to develop a website for esports tournaments using the custom development approach. I will explain this approach now.

The custom-development approach to creating an esports platform

You need to do the following:

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1. Design a compelling ‘User Interface’ (UI).
2. Engage a ‘Platform as a Service’ (PaaS) provider so that you can remain focused on your development.
3. Develop the website with custom coding.
4. Use ‘Application Programming Interfaces’ (APIs) for common functions.

A website is a ‘System of Engagement’ (SoE), i.e., a customer-facing system. Such applications undergo frequent enhancement, therefore, iterative development is imperative.

“Agile” methodology fits well here. You need to organize your team into an Agile team. Use our guide “How to build an Agile development team” for help.

A development team to create a website for esports tournaments

You need to assemble a team with the following skills:

• Business analysts;
• UI/UX designers: HTML and CSS skills are important;
• Web developers with good expertise in popular web development languages like Java, NodeJS, PHP, or JavaScript;
• Testers;
• A project manager (PM).

The PM should know modern PM methodologies and PM best practices well. Use our guides to project management methodologies. You can also read our guide to project management best practices.

Choose a PaaS provider

Start-ups often don’t have the funds to invest in infrastructure and software licensing. The ‘Platform as a Service’ (PaaS) model of cloud computing comes in handy for them as it dramatically reduces costs.

A PaaS provider manages the cloud infrastructure, networking, security, middleware, operating system (OS), database, scaling, and runtime environments.

This leaves our entrepreneurs to focus on application development and application data. The result is a quick ‘Time to Market’ for the product with much reduced up-front investment. I recommend you engage a PaaS provider.

There are several reputed PaaS providers to choose from. I recommend you use Heroku PaaS. You can sign up for them for a fee.

Once you have done this, you can choose your preferred runtime environment, e.g., Java. You can also select a database.

You can use the 3^rd party APIs they provide, alternatively, you can buy APIs from another provider and integrate them into your website built on Heroku or other such platforms.

You can also use a DevOps tool suite to automate your testing, build management, and deployment.

Consume APIs for common functions

To expedite your development further, I recommend you use APIs for common functions. Consider the following APIs:

Toornament APIs

Toornament, the esports tournament website also provides APIs. Developers can use them to build several functionalities on their websites. With the Toornament APIs, you can incorporate the following features:

• Collect and publish tournament information;
• Get information for a user;
• List matches;
• List scheduled of tournaments;
• Create and manage tournaments;
• Register a user to a tournament and manage their participation in it.

You can consult Toornament API tutorials. The company offers a “how-to” guide for its APIs. You can also use the Toornament API “Get Started” guide.

The Abios esports API

Abios provides APIs for developers to use on their websites. With their APIs, you can incorporate live scores and statistics on your website. The company provides data that covers all popular games and collects data from reputable sources.

The data can be on a real-time basis or on a game-by-game basis. There is also aggregate data available. The APIs provide all key esports statistics that you might want on your website. You can consult the Abios developer hub documentation. Contact the company via its homepage for pricing information.

PandaScore APIs

PandaScore provides APIs for esports data. You can use them to create an esports platform.

You can include real-time esports data on your website with these APIs. They cover many popular esports.

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These APIs can provide players, teams, matches, and tournaments. You can stream live esports data using these APIs. Check out the PandaScore API documentation. Review PandaScore API pricing plans here.

Managing the esports tournament website development

I recommend you use the proven ‘Scrum’ methodology, which is a part of the larger Agile methodology. In this technique, you organize your team as follows:

• ‘Scrum master’, i.e., the PM;
• ‘Product owner’ (PO), i.e., the stakeholder who provides requirements in a document called the ‘Product backlog’;
• The cross-functional scrum team with developers and testers working together.

The scrum team works as follows:

1. The team estimates the requirements. A ‘Sprint planning meeting’ is held to plan a ‘Sprint’, i.e., an iteration.
2. During the execution of a sprint, the team conducts a ‘Daily stand-up meeting’ to discuss the project status. The scrum master uses this meeting to find out about issues and resolve them.
3. When the requirements are developed and tested fully, the features should be in a demonstrable state. The team conducts a ‘Sprint review meeting’, where the project stakeholders approve the sprint.
4. After the sprint, the team conducts a ‘Sprint retrospective meeting’, which is a lessons-learned exercise.

Check our guide “How to build a Scrum development team” for more details.

You need to use an appropriate project management tool. Zoho is a good choice, however, our agile PM tools guide provides more examples.

You may want to convert your website into a mobile app in the future. We have a guide that can help you with this. Read “How to convert your website into a mobile app” for more information on this.

How much does it cost to build an eSports website?

PaaS providers publish their pricing details on their websites. Some API providers do so too, whereas you need to contact the providers that don’t.

Your development manpower cost depends on your features and the local labor market. 

Planning to Build an Esports Tournament Website?

A MarketsandMarkets report estimates that the global esports market will grow significantly. The report projects this market to reach $2.1748 billion in 2023, up from $694.2 million in 2017. This market research report estimates a CAGR of 18.61% during the 2018-2023 period.

Given the lucrative future of the esports industry, today is the right time to start planning your next esports tournament software project. 

As discussed above, to develop a professional esports tournament website with customizable features, you will need excellent coding skills and knowledge of the best software development practices.

If you don’t have these programming skills in your project team, you might need to get professional help for this end-to-end development project. Read our guide “How to find the best software development company?” for more information.

If you are still looking for an esports-expert developers community, DevTeam.Space can help. You can partner with our software developers experienced in using all the latest technologies to build market-competitive software solutions by giving your initial development requirements via this quick form.

One of our technical managers will get back to you to discuss further details on team building, project planning, implementation, etc.

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