A classic padel tournament with multiple levels has an annoying problem: it's socially dead. Level 9 plays in the morning and heads home. Level 7/8 shows up at 11am and sees nobody else. Level 6 kicks off at 1pm just as the bar is quieting down. Everyone has had their own individual tournament, and nobody has had a day together.
The sequential time-block format is logistically tidy, but it misses the most important thing: that club feeling. Senna from Silva's Padel put it in a message last week: "With sequential you stand around for 4 hours. With parallel you need 6 courts I don't have. I want something in between." That's where Festival Format came from.
The idea in one sentence
Festival Format is a new tournament mode for multi-level events where the sections take turns on shared courts following a rotation. Each level gets a 15-minute round across all courts, then it's the next level's turn, and once the rotation is complete, cycle 2 begins.
A concrete example
Say you have an event on Sunday 30 August, 9am to 2pm, 4 padel courts, three levels (9, 7/8, and 6 and below), each with 10 pairs split across 2 groups.
The Festival schedule looks like this:
- 09:00 – 09:15: Level 9 plays round 1 on all 4 courts
- 09:15 – 09:30: Level 7/8 plays round 1, level 9 takes a break
- 09:30 – 09:45: Level 6 and below plays round 1, the others rest
- 09:45 – 10:00: Back to level 9, now round 2
- ...
Every player has something to do again every 30 minutes, with 30 minutes of rest between rounds. During that break they watch the other levels, grab a drink, and mingle with players from a different level.
Why this works
Three things shift compared to sequential:
1. Courts are booked non-stop. No empty courts between blocks, no waiting for the organizer to switch things over. Full use of court time, higher ROI per hour of court rental.
2. Rest with momentum. Players finish playing for 30 minutes and know they're back on in 30 minutes. Too short to "go home", long enough for a beer. That's exactly the social time clubs want.
3. Everyone sees each other. A level 9 player watches level 6 (and the other way round). That builds social ties between experienced players and newcomers. With sequential they never cross paths.
Which clubs it works for
Festival Format is meant for specific occasions where the social side matters at least as much as the competition. Concretely:
- Corporate tournaments: colleagues at different levels want to play at the same time and network in between
- Club parties and anniversaries: padel plus drinks plus everyone on site together
- Sponsor events: sponsors want to meet all the players, not three separate groups back to back
- Open days and intro events: new members see the whole club in action, not just one level
For a regular KNLTB-style competition or a serious prize tournament, sequential or a classic group structure is better. Festival is for the days where fun and atmosphere come first.
What it solves technically
The real problem Festival Format solves is scheduling complexity. An event with 3 levels, 60 pairs and 4 courts has hundreds of possible match combinations. Building it by hand in Excel is an evening's work. Slams generates the Festival schedule in seconds, including the right interleaving so no player ever plays twice in a row.
On top of that, it handles court allocation: the scheduler knows which section gets which court at which moment, and makes sure it rotates seamlessly.
How to turn it on
Create a tournament in Slams with multiple sections (the regular wizard already supports multi-level). In the tournament's Settings tab you'll then see a new section called "Festival Format". Switch it on, choose the start time, end time, round duration (default 15 minutes) and number of courts, then click "Generate schedule". The rest happens automatically.
On the day itself, put up a TV screen next to court 1 with the Slams TV page. Players see live which level is playing, on which court, and who's up next. No volunteer having to explain the court layout every round.
What it costs
Festival Format is included with every Slams subscription, the free Start plan included. No separate add-on. Our reasoning: this is an idea that makes things more fun, and you shouldn't put that behind a paywall.
Read more about Festival Format. Start for free and try it at your next club event.
