> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.scoreholio.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.scoreholio.com/tournament/tournament-formats/backyard-battle.md).
# Backyard Battle
## Backyard Battle
Backyard Battle is a flexible multi-sport tournament format built for players or teams competing across multiple games at the same time. Backyard Battle gives organizers a Scoreholio-powered way to run it across any mix of sports, games, or activities.
{% hint style="info" %}
**Important:** Backyard Battle is available only in the **Other Sports** section of Scoreholio. It does **not** work with ScoreMagic for any sport being played.
{% endhint %}
### What Is Backyard Battle?
Backyard Battle lets organizers create a tournament where the same players or teams compete across multiple sports or activities. Each sport gets its own dedicated courts, its own leaderboard, and its own flow of games.
Organizers can use any sport or game they want. The sport does not need to already exist in Scoreholio. You can free-form write in any activity, such as cornhole, darts, billiards, pickleball, popdarts, horseshoes, card games, backyard games, or anything else you want to include.
### Courts by Sport
Each sport can have its own dedicated courts. Organizers can assign as many courts as they want to each sport.
For example:
Cornhole could have 4 courts\
Darts could have 2 boards\
Billiards could have 1 table\
Horseshoes could have 2 pits
Organizers can also pause or start courts as needed. This makes it easy to speed up or slow down a specific sport during the event.
For example, if cornhole is moving too fast, you can pause one of the cornhole courts. If darts is falling behind, you can open more darts boards or resume paused courts.
### Court Setup Tips
For the smoothest Backyard Battle experience, we recommend turning off warm-up timers. Edit your court labels courts based on the sport assigned to each court. This makes it easier for players and organizers to quickly see which sport is being played on each court, especially when multiple games are running at the same time.\
### Starting Gameplay
To start gameplay, go to the **Round Robin** tab and click the **Advance Game** button.
Scoreholio will scan the upcoming queue, find the next available games, and fill the courts based on player availability. If a player or team is already playing another sport, Scoreholio will skip that game until they are available and place the next eligible game on an open court.
### Court Groups and Court Setup Tips
To re-arrange which sports are assigned to each court, go to the **Round Robin** tab, toggle over to **Court Groups**, and adjust the court assignments there.
For the smoothest Backyard Battle experience, we recommend turning off warm-up timers. Scoreholio will automatically label your courts based on the sport assigned to each court. This makes it easier for players and organizers to quickly see which sport is being played on each court, especially when multiple games are running at the same time.\
### How Scheduling Works
Backyard Battle uses Scoreholio’s familiar [**Set Schedule Optimized**](https://docs.scoreholio.com/) model.
The system scans the upcoming queue and automatically places the next available game onto an open court. If a player or team is already playing on a court in another sport, Scoreholio recognizes that and will not assign them to another court at the same time.
This allows organizers to run multiple sports at once without accidentally double-booking players.
### Scoring Options
Games can be scored using:
Player Scoring\
Scoreholio tablets\
Scoring directly from Admin
For Backyard Battle, the score limit is locked at **99** for all sports. This means the **Submit** button will always be available during the game. Players should not submit the game until the score for that game is final and complete.
Once a game is completed, Scoreholio continues scanning the queue and sends the next available game to the appropriate court.
### Leaderboards
Each sport has its own leaderboard so players and teams can see how they are performing in each individual activity.
Backyard Battle also includes an overall leaderboard that calculates scores across all sports played. This gives organizers and players one main leaderboard to track the full competition.
Players can drop down into each sport-specific leaderboard or view the overall standings across the entire Backyard Battle.
### Custom Dashboards
Backyard Battle works great with Scoreholio’s new [Custom Dashboards](/scoreboards-and-dashboards/custom-dashboards.md#custom-dashboards).
Organizers can create unique dashboards that show multiple sports, leaderboards, courts, and live activity in real time. This makes it easy to build a fun event display showing everything happening across the Backyard Battle.\
### Team Generation
Backyard Battle currently supports the following team generation options:
**Set Teams**\
Organizers manually create or import the teams that will compete across the Backyard Battle.
**Singles**\
Each player competes individually across all sports.
**Blind Draw**\
Scoreholio randomly creates teams from the registered players.
At this time, Backyard Battle only supports **Set Teams**, **Singles**, and **Blind Draw** team generation.
### Why Use Backyard Battle?
Backyard Battle is designed for events where organizers want to run multiple games at the same time while keeping everything organized, fair, and easy to follow.
It is perfect for:
Backyard tournaments\
Bar and brewery events\
Corporate parties\
Fundraisers\
Multi-game leagues\
Family events\
Field day-style competitions\
Custom game nights
With automated scheduling, sport-specific courts, flexible scoring, individual leaderboards, and an overall leaderboard, Backyard Battle gives organizers a simple way to run a multi-sport competition inside Scoreholio.