Stadium Ratings

What are Stadium Ratings?

Stadium Ratings are a free, unsanctioned, and fully-automated ELO rating system that anyone around the world can use.

How do I get a Stadium Rating?

First, you need to make or claim a player profile by going to stadiumcompete.com/my-profile. You can then find your Stadium membership ID on your profile. Make sure this is attached to any entries in a Stadium tournament or league if you want the results to count towards your rating.

You can get rated by winning matches on Stadium against other players who already have a Stadium Rating.

Why do we need another rating system?

First of all, it’s important to note that this is not meant to necessarily replace existing systems. Each system has its own merits. We built Stadium Ratings to work alongside existing systems so you don’t have to just choose one.

Reason #1: Accuracy

In our opinion, the biggest challenge with rating systems in physical sports is the lack of data. It’s impossible to have accurate ratings when you just don’t play enough matches.

In e-sports or online chess, ratings are typically much more accurate, simply due to the sheer amount of data. In physical sports, players need to organize events, travel to locations, and pay for time and/or space. In addition, matches are long and physically exhausting so the number of matches you can play in a given day is much fewer than online games.

On top of that, rating systems are usually tied to sanctioning bodies or federations, which enact rules or paywalls that cause even more restriction.

On Stadium, it’s simple - every single match can count toward your rating.

Nationally-sanctioned tournament? Count it. Club league? Done. Weekend event with your friends? Sure. Rating accuracy increases with every data point we can get.

Reason #2: Ease of Use

We’ve also found that the barrier to entry when using other rating systems is quite high. You often need to pay for access, then navigate complicated or outdated software to use the ratings and/or submit results.

With Stadium Ratings, it’s easy. Anyone can create a tournament or league on Stadium. Once you ensure your players are linked to their Stadium membership IDs (they can also do this themselves) - everything else is fully automated.

There’s no need for complicated exports or result submission processes. Every match that is created, completed, and certified within a published Stadium event can automatically count for the players’ ratings without any additional steps.

How are ratings calculated?

We use the same ELO point spread as the USA Table Tennis rating system. If you and your opponent are 40 points apart, for example, you’ll win or lose 6 points if there is an expected result (higher-rated player wins). In case of an upset (lower-rated player wins), you’ll win or lose 16 points.

In the Stadium Rating system, there are no adjustments outside of the above table.

What happens if one of the players is unrated?

In the case that a player is unrated, no one who plays them that day can gain or lose points. This is by design because we’ve seen too many cases where an unrated player is improperly estimated and it causes all sorts of havoc with other players’ ratings.

Instead, we use their results to assign them a rating to be in effect starting the next day.

If the unrated player has a mix of wins and losses, their rating the next day will be the average between the highest rating they won against and the lowest rating they lost against.

If the unrated player only has wins, their rating the next day will be the same as the highest rating they won against.

If the unrated player only has losses, they will remain unrated.

What if there is a mistake?

Score corrections can be made by the organizer of the Stadium event. They simply need to un-certify the match, update the scores, and re-certify. However, this re-certification must occur within 7 days of the first certification.

If the mistake is not corrected within 7 days of the original certification, we cannot guarantee that it will be fixed, since the change may affect a lot of other players’ ratings as well. Please reach out to support@stadiumcompete.com for more information.