The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
- One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentrated into a relatively short time interval.
- A competition involving a number of matches, each involving a subset of the competitors, with the overall tournament winner determined based on the combined results of these individual matches. These are common in those sports and games where each match must involve a small number of competitors: often precisely two, as in most team sports, racket sports and combat sports, many card games and board games, and many forms of competitive debating. Such tournaments allow large numbers to compete against each other in spite of the restriction on numbers in a single match.
A bracket or tournament bracket is a tree diagram that represents the series of games played during a knockout tournament. Different knockout tournament formats have different brackets; the simplest and most common is that of the single-elimination tournament. The name "bracket" is American English, derived from the resemblance of the links in the tree diagram to the bracket punctuation symbol ] or [. The closest British term is draw, although this implies an element of chance, whereas some brackets are determined entirely by seeding.
A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden-death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final match-up, whose winner becomes the tournament champion(s). Each match-up may be a single match or several, for example two-legged ties in European sports or best-of series in North American pro sports. Defeated competitors may play no further part after losing, or may participate in "consolation" or "classification" matches against other losers to determine the lower final rankings; for example, a third place playoff between losing semi-finalists. In a shootout poker tournament, there are more than two players competing at each table, and sometimes more than one progresses to the next round. Some competitions are held with a pure single-elimination tournament system. Others have many phases, with the last being a single-elimination final stage, often called playoffs.
Repechage is a practice in series competitions that allows participants who failed to meet qualifying standards by a small margin to continue to the next round. A well-known example is the wild card system.
The McIntyre system, or systems as there have been five of them, is a playoff system that gives an advantage to teams or competitors qualifying higher. The systems were developed by Ken McIntyre, an Australian lawyer, historian and English lecturer, for the Victorian Football League in 1931.
After a top-five play-off system was used, a play-off structure involving the top six teams was used to determine the winners of the Super League competition in British rugby league from 2002 through to 2008.
The McIntyre final eight system was devised by Ken McIntyre in addition to the McIntyre Four, Five and Six systems. It is a playoff system of the top 8 finishers in a competition to determine which two teams will play in the grand final. The teams play each other over three weeks, with two teams eliminated each week. Teams who finish in a higher position in the competition are given an easier route to the grand final.
The 2005 National Rugby League season consisted of 25 weekly regular season rounds starting in March, followed by four weeks of play-offs that culminated in a grand final on 2 October.
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the single elimination, the best-of- series, the total points series more commonly known as on aggregate, and the round-robin tournament.
A wild card is a tournament or playoff berth awarded to a team or individual that does not qualify through an automatic bid. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference.
The AFL final eight system is an eight-team championship playoff tournament developed and adopted by the Australian Football League in the 2000 season. The eight teams, which are ranked or seeded in advance of the tournament, participate in a four-week tournament, with two teams eliminated in each of the first three weeks. The grand final is played in the fourth week between the two remaining teams, with the winning team awarded the premiership.
The Page playoff system is a playoff format. It is used in top level competitions in softball, curling, and the Indian Premier League and Pakistan Super League cricket tournaments, and is used widely in lower level competitions around Australia. Teams are seeded using a round-robin or league tournament, and the top four play a mix of a single-elimination and double-elimination tournament to determine the winner.
In sports, a bye is the preferential status of a player or team that is automatically advanced to the next round of a tournament without having to play an opponent in an early round.
The Australian Football League finals series, more generally known as the AFL finals, and known from 1897 until 1989 as the Victorian Football League finals series or VFL finals, is a playoff tournament held at the end of each AFL season to determine the premier. The top eight teams qualify for the finals based on the home-and-away season results, and finals matches are played over four weeks under the conventions of the AFL final eight system, culminating in the AFL Grand Final. The finals series is traditionally held throughout September.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs is the annual elimination tournament held to determine the league champion. The four-round, best-of-seven tournament is held after the league's regular season and its preliminary postseason tournament, the NBA play-in tournament. Six teams from each of the two conferences automatically advance to the playoffs based on regular season winning percentage, while those teams finishing seven through 10 from each conference compete in the play-in tournament to determine the final two playoff seeds.
The major national club competition in France is the Top 14. The Top 14 is played on a home and away basis between the top fourteen club sides in France. The second major competition in France is the Rugby Pro D2 competition. A relegation system exists between the two tiers of competition. Both competitions are operated by Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR).
Since 1998, a play-off system has been used to determine the Super League champions. The format has changed over the years, starting with a play-off involving first five, then six teams, eight, four and currently back to six. The play-off series culminates in the Super League Grand Final. Use of a play-off system to decide the Championship brought back a rugby league tradition that had previously fallen out of use. The Super League Premiership, which had previously taken place between the highest placed teams in the competition, was discontinued after the introduction of the Super League play-off series. This was because its purpose had been to take the place of the previous Championship-deciding play-off system.
The NRL finals system is the finals series that is currently being used by the National Rugby League competitions of Australia and New Zealand since 2012. The NRL finals system replaced the McIntyre system which was used from 1999 to 2011.
The Argus finals systems were related systems of end-of-season playoff tournaments used commonly in Australian sports competitions in the first half of the 20th century. The systems were first developed in Australian rules football competitions in 1902, and were used broadly across Australia into the 1950s.
