World Cup bracket
Canada co-hosted the first one in 2026. Twelve groups, the eight best third placed teams, and a round of 32 before you reach the shape anyone recognizes. Fanzava's team builds the bracket, locks every pick together at the time you set and scores it under your logo, your colours and your domain.
Free to start. No credit card.
Upload your logo, set your colours, name the pool and open the invite link. Your people join by link, QR code or bulk upload. Nothing about the experience says Fanzava, because everything about it says you.
Seventy two matches over about two weeks, three of them most days, every one with its own kickoff and its own lock. This is where the habit gets built, and it is the reason a World Cup pool holds attention for a month instead of a weekend.
A World Cup bracket cannot exist before the third placed teams are ranked. Once the final group match is over, the round of 32 is known and Fanzava's team builds the bracket with every matchup already in place. Nobody on your side redraws anything by hand.
Fanzava records each knockout result and picks score, the leaderboard moves, and there is no formula anywhere in the process, through knockout days that carry four matches across as many time zones.
Groups let floors, departments or offices run their own standings inside the one pool and see how they rank against each other. The Banter Board gives the person who called the round of 32 upset somewhere to say so.
A World Cup bracket is not a March bracket. The field is not seeded into a printed grid, the bracket does not exist until the group stage ends, and knockout matches cannot end level. Settle these five before the invite goes out.
There are two completely different competitions here. A predicted bracket asks people to call the whole knockout phase before a ball is kicked, which means guessing which third placed teams sneak through. A filled bracket opens the moment the groups end, when all 32 knockout teams are known. The first is harder and far more fun. The second gets more entries. Pick one and say so on the invite.
This is the mechanic that breaks every bracket template written before 2026. Third place in a group is not automatically out and not automatically in. All twelve third placed teams are ranked against each other on points, then goal difference, then goals scored, and the top eight go through. A team can finish third with the same record as another third placed team and go home on goals scored. If your pool runs a predicted bracket, this is where it is won.
A group match can finish level. A knockout match cannot. It goes to thirty minutes of extra time and then a shootout, so every bracket pick resolves to a team that advances. That is the only sane way to score a bracket. What you do have to decide is your group stage scoring: a draw is a real third outcome, and most pools pay more for calling one than for calling a winner.
Five rounds now, not four. Scoring every match the same would make each of the sixteen round of 32 matches worth as much as the final, which lets a fast starter run away with it. Fanzava weights the rounds instead: one point times the round number, so a round of 32 match is worth 1 and the final is worth 5, with 10 more for the correct champion. The weighting is the same for every pool.
It is a real match with a real result and most pools simply forget to mention it. Score it or exclude it, either is defensible. Saying nothing is what produces the message on the Saturday before the final.
Every other competition starts with explaining why your audience should care. A World Cup starts with people already asking who you have in the final. The work is not persuasion, it is having somewhere for them to put the pick before the interest cools.
Group stage matches land most days for two weeks, then the knockout phase runs to a single night with a trophy on it. That is a complete engagement arc with a beginning and an end, which is exactly what a sponsor, a marketing calendar or an office wants and exactly what a season long competition cannot offer.
A tournament spread across host cities and continents kicks off at every hour of the day. A bracket locks once, at the time you ask for, so every entrant has the same deadline and nobody picks a game that has already started.
Paid plans ship full white label: your logo, your colours and your brand across every screen, every email and every notification. Pro and Enterprise add a custom domain and a custom email sender, so the pool lives at your address and the emails come from you.
Free to start. No credit card.
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