Three ways to get anglers in

FishTourney gives organizers three distinct ways to get anglers into a tournament. Each one fits a different logistics style. You can use all three on the same event — for example, open self-registration for most anglers and use manual registration for the handful of late entries you collected by phone.

Self-registration

An angler navigates to the tournament's public page and clicks Register. If the tournament has an entry fee and you have Stripe Connect active, payment is collected immediately via Stripe Checkout before their spot is confirmed. If the tournament is free, registration completes in one click.

Self-registration is the default path for public tournaments. It requires no work from you — anglers find the event on the browse page (or via a direct link you share) and register themselves. Registration closes automatically once the participant cap is reached.

To enable self-registration, set the tournament visibility to Public and check Allow individual registration in Step 3 of the wizard. Both are on by default when you create a new tournament.

Manual registration

You add a participant directly from the admin panel without requiring them to touch the app. Open the tournament's management page, click Manual Registration, and enter either an email address or a first and last name (or both). If the email matches an existing FishTourney account, the participant is linked to that account. If not, a guest entry is created under the name you provided.

Manually registered participants are marked as paid immediately — no Stripe payment is triggered. This is intentional: manual registration exists precisely for cases where payment happened outside the platform (cash at the weigh-in station, checks mailed in, payment through an outside system, etc.).

Manual registration also supports teams. You can register a new team with all its members at once, add an individual to an existing team, or create a team from participants who are already registered as individuals. See Team tournaments for details.

Email invitation

You send a targeted invite to a specific email address. Open the tournament admin panel and click Invite Participant. Enter the angler's email address and click Send Invite. What happens next depends on whether they have an account:

• Existing account: they receive an in-app notification. Their participant record is created immediately with status invited. An Accept Invitation button appears on the tournament page when they are signed in. If the tournament has an entry fee, they are taken through Stripe Checkout when they accept.
• No account yet: they receive an email prompting them to sign up. Once they create an account and navigate to the tournament, the invitation is waiting for them.

Invitation is only available on private and unlisted tournaments. For public tournaments, use self-registration or manual registration instead.