How to use AuctionXI

What each stage means

Your dashboard

After signing in you land on your dashboard. The New Tournament button starts the creation wizard. Existing tournaments appear as cards you can search with Search tournaments, filter by status (All Status, Draft, Live, Ended, Archived) and sort (Newest First, Oldest First, Name A-Z, Most Teams, Most Players).

Opening a tournament shows its sidebar. The pages, in order:

A status strip also appears above every tournament page once you launch: a green Tournament is live bar with a shortcut to the Operator panel, an amber This auction has ended bar once ended, or a gray This tournament is archived bar.

Step 1 - Sport

Pick the sport for your auction: Cricket, Football, Volleyball, Kabaddi, Basketball, Badminton or Custom / Other. Your pick pre-fills sensible defaults for squad size and purse (for example Cricket starts with a maximum of 15 players and a purse of 100 per team). The wizard moves to the next step automatically once you pick.

Step 2 - Name Your Auction

1. Tournament Name - at least 3 characters. This shows everywhere: screens, links, emails.
2. URL Slug - the address your audience will visit, shown as app.auction-xi.com/your-tournament-name. Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only. The wizard checks availability as you type and suggests one from your name.
3. Tournament Logo - required. PNG, JPG or WebP, maximum 2 MB.
4. Currency - a Unit (required, up to 10 characters, for example Cr, Lakhs or Points) and an optional Symbol (up to 5 characters, for example ₹ or $). A hint shows exactly how amounts will look on screen.

Step 3 - Set the Stakes

1. Purse per Team - the budget every team gets. The field accepts numbers with up to 4 decimal places, and the on-screen hint recommends: up to 2 decimals recommended, amounts display cleanest on screens.
2. Same budget for all teams - a toggle, on by default. Turn it off later if you want per-team budgets (set on the Teams page).
3. Min Players and Max Players - the roster constraints per team. Max must be equal to or more than min. Leaving a gap between them lets teams manage their remaining purse in the final rounds.

Step 4 - Pick Your Plan

Plans differ by how many teams you can configure: Starter, Pro and Premium, with the price shown on each card (during a sale you see the original price struck through with the discount). All plans include the full auction experience. Running something bigger than the largest plan? The Enterprise card's Contact Sales button takes you to Support and we set it up with you.

Step 5 - Pay and create

The final step shows your summary and a Payment card with the plan price. If you have a coupon code, enter it here and press Apply to see the discount before paying. Then press Pay & Create: a secure Razorpay checkout opens where you pay by UPI, card or netbanking. Your tournament is created the moment the payment is confirmed, and you land in its dashboard, still in Draft, ready to configure. A payment confirmation email with the tournament link follows.

Tournament Identity and schedule

• Tournament Logo - JPG, PNG or WebP, maximum 2 MB.
• Tournament Name - at least 3 characters.
• URL Slug - the public address of your auction. As the tooltip says, this is the URL your audience uses to view the auction and it cannot be changed once live.
• Auction Schedule - an optional Date and Time that shows as a countdown on the dashboard. This is for planning only; you still launch the auction manually from the Launch page.

Currency & Economics

• Unit (required, up to 10 characters) and Symbol (optional, up to 5 characters).
• Purse per Team - the total budget each team gets to buy players. Numbers with up to 4 decimal places; up to 2 decimals is recommended because amounts display cleanest on screens.
• Starting Bid - the opening price when a player comes up for auction. If you configure a pricing field (below), this input is replaced by the note: pricing is configured on a player field and starting bids are set per option.
• Equal purse for all teams - when enabled, every team gets the same purse amount. Turn it off to set custom budgets per team on the Teams page.
• Enable purse protection- highlights teams that cannot afford the current bid and asks the operator for an extra confirmation before any sale that would break a team's budget or squad limits. Nothing is ever hard-blocked: the operator can always override and sell anyway. With the toggle off, no money or squad checks run at all - every sale goes straight through.

Bid Increments and Team Capacity

• Bid Increments - the quick-bid buttons for your auctioneer. At least 1 is required and the maximum is 6. Every increment must be a positive number smaller than the purse.
• Team Capacity - Min Players and Max Players each team can buy. As the tooltip explains, min players multiplied by the number of teams is the minimum pool you must add before launching; max is for display only and does not block adding more players to the pool.

Player Profile Fields

The Player Profile Fields card defines the extra columns on every player, up to 5 fields. Each field has a Field name (up to 50 characters, shown on the player form and in the auction), a Field type and a Required checkbox.

A Dropdown field with options can additionally be marked Use as pricing field. This sets a different starting bid for each option: for every option you fill a Starting bid and a Bid step. The bid step becomes the primary increment shown to the auctioneer, and the other bid increments you configured remain available during the auction. Only one field can have pricing.

What locks after launch

Once the tournament leaves Draft, this entire page becomes read-only and shows the banner: settings cannot be edited while the tournament is live. That covers the logo, name, slug, schedule, currency, purse, starting bid, both toggles, bid increments and team capacity. Player Profile Fields stay visible in a view-only mode.

Adding a player

1. Click Add Player.
2. Upload Player Photo- optional but strongly recommended. PNG only, maximum 2 MB, shown circular cropped. The form's own tip: a square photo with a transparent background (PNG, 800×800px) looks best on the live big screens.
3. Name - required.
4. Email - required and unique within the tournament. It lets the player see their auction history when they sign in with this email.
5. Phone - required and unique within the tournament. Pick the country, then enter the number. Used to send the player WhatsApp updates.
6. Fill your Player Profile Fields (required ones are marked with an asterisk) and press Save Player Profile.

The Sr No (serial number) is assigned automatically when you add players one by one. Serial numbers are unique per tournament; through the Excel import you can set them yourself, anywhere from 1 to 999999.

Statuses, filters and the edit drawer

Above the table you can Search by name, filter by every Player Profile Field you configured (Dropdown and Yes / No fields get a picker, Text and Number fields match as you type, Date fields get a date picker), filter by Status (Available, Sold, Unsold) and clear everything with Clear. Rows are sortable by Sr No and Athlete, with 25 to 200 rows per page. Selecting rows opens a bulk bar with Delete and Export CSV.

Clicking Edit opens the player drawer where you can change the photo, name, email, phone and all Player Details, then press Save Changes. If the player is sold, the drawer shows a banner (sold to which team and for how much) and every field is read-only.

Bulk import from Excel

Bulk Import walks you through four steps: Template, Upload, Review and Confirm.

1. Press Download Excel Template (.xlsx). The sheet is built for your tournament: the first five columns are fixed and required, in this exact order: Sr No, Name, Email, Country Code, Phone Number, followed by one column per Player Profile Field. Do not rename or reorder the headers; the file fails validation if they do not match exactly.
2. Fill the sheet. Country Code and every Dropdown column have in-sheet dropdowns; Dropdown values must match your options exactly (case-sensitive). Sr No must be a unique number from 1 to 999999. Each player needs a different email and a different phone number.
3. Upload the completed .xlsx file and press Validate.
4. Review the results. Errors list the exact row, field and problem so you can fix and re-upload. Players who share a name are only a heads-up warning, not an error.
5. On the confirm step, type the tournament name exactly as shown and press Replace Player List.

Bulk photo upload

Upload Photosmatches image files to players by filename: name each file after the player's serial number, for example 1.png or 47.png. The match is exact, so skip leading zeros - 007.png will NOT match serial number 7, only 7.png does. PNG images only, maximum 2 MB each, up to 100 images per batch. Before uploading you see exactly which files matched a player and which will be skipped. Square photos with a transparent background (PNG, 800×800px) look best on the live big screens.

Unlike the Excel import, photo upload only touches the players whose serial numbers are in your folder. A matched player's existing photo is replaced by the new one; every other player - including ones who already have photos - is left completely untouched. Running a batch never clears anyone's photo, so you can upload in as many rounds as you like.

Adding a team

1. Team Name - required, up to 255 characters.
2. Short Name- required. 1 to 5 letters or numbers, no spaces or symbols. It is uppercased automatically and is what appears on compact screens like the operator's bidder grid and the audience phone view.
3. Team logo - required. JPG, PNG or WebP, maximum 2 MB.
4. Theme Background and Accent Color - the two colors that brand this team across every scene. Pick from the palette or enter a hex value like #1e3a5f.
5. Purse amount - shown only when the Settings toggle Equal purse for all teams is off. Leave it empty to use the tournament default, or enter a custom budget for this team.
6. Captain Contact Information - optional Full Name, Email Address and Phone Number.

Managing teams

Switch between Grid and Table views. In the table you can drag rows to reorder, select teams for bulk actions and Export CSV. Deleting a team asks for confirmation; a team that already has sold players cannot be deleted until those sales are removed through the operator panel. After launch the page is view-only and shows: teams cannot be edited while the tournament is live.

Adding a sponsor

1. Sponsor Name - required, up to 30 characters.
2. Type - optional free text, up to 50 characters, for example Title Sponsor or Co-Sponsor.
3. Tagline - optional, up to 50 characters.
4. Logo Upload - JPG, PNG or WebP, maximum 2 MB. Optional, but the Sponsor Spotlight and Sponsor Carousel scenes look far better for sponsors that have a logo image.

Every saved sponsor always shows in the auction; the modal's Shown in auction switch is permanently on. Sponsors appear in three places: the Sponsor Spotlight scene (a full-screen takeover for one sponsor), the Sponsor Carousel scene (auto-rotating through several) and the sponsor marquee - the scrolling ticker on the projector and on audience phones, which shows sponsor names as text.

Ordering

Drag cards to reorder. As the page itself notes, order controls the marquee sequence. Which sponsors appear in each overlay, and their timing, is configured on the Scenes page under Global Sponsor Overlays.

The scene catalog

Scenes are grouped by category. Toggle any scene on or off; disabled scenes disappear from the operator's Switch Scene grid. Four scenes are always on and cannot be disabled: Idle Screen, Special Mentions, Clear / Blank and Branded Animation.

Live Preview and Background Mode

Selecting a scene shows a Live Preview for both targets, Projector and Overlay, using sample data so you can see every scene before any teams or players exist.

Background Mode is set per target. The projector is always Solid. The overlay can be Transparent (the default, made for OBS) or Solid. The two targets are configured independently; editing one never changes the other.

Live Bidding options

• Overlay Layout - how the overlay shows live bidding: Side card (a compact card on the right side) or Bottom strip (a strip across the bottom of the screen). The projector always uses the full layout.
• Reveal Duration - how long the SOLD or UNSOLD result stays on screen before returning to the waiting view: 4 to 10 seconds, 7 by default. Applies to both the projector and the overlay from the next reveal.

Scenes marked with parameters (like Team Squad or Category Stats) show a Scene Parameterspanel here, but note its badge: demo only, it won't apply live. Those picks only drive the preview; the real team, sponsor, page or category is chosen by the operator at activation time.

Countdown scenes - Coming Soon and Intermission

The Coming Soon and Intermission scenes have their own countdown controls right on this page: quick presets (5, 15 or 30 minutes and 1 hour), a custom duration in hours, minutes and seconds, or an exact date-and-time to count down to. You also choose what happens on zero: Hold (stay at zero) or Loop(restart after a delay you set), plus an optional short message shown at zero - it defaults to "Starting Soon" on Coming Soon and "Back Shortly" on Intermission.

Special Mentions setup

Special Mentions people are configured on this page: up to 3 people, each with a Name (up to 20 characters), a Role (up to 10 characters) and a photo (PNG only; a square 800×800px with a transparent background looks best). Once a name is set, the Live Preview shows your real people instead of sample data. The operator picks who to show at activation time.

Scene Transitions

Pick which transition clip plays when scenes switch: one for the projector, one for the overlay. Choices save the moment you click.

Global Sponsor Overlays

These settings apply across all scenes:

• Sponsor Marquee - a scrolling sponsor ticker shown on the projector and on audience phones. Toggle it on, set the Speed(Slow, Normal or Fast) and pick all sponsors or a specific set. A live preview band shows exactly how it will scroll.
• Sponsor Carousel scene settings - which sponsors rotate and the Seconds per sponsor (5 to 10). The Sponsor Spotlight scene uses the same sponsor set and timing.

The Smart Link - for your audience

The Smart Link is the only link your audience needs. Share it on WhatsApp, Instagram or print it as a QR at your venue. The card gives you:

• Copy Link - copies the address to your clipboard.
• Download QR - a high resolution QR image (2000×2000 PNG) ready for print.
• WhatsApp - opens WhatsApp with a ready-made announcement message.
• Share QR - opens your device's share sheet with the QR image attached. Best on mobile.

On a Draft tournament the page reminds you that the links go live once you launch, so you can share them in advance and your audience has them ready.

The producer links - private

The venue pro-tip

The page includes a print-ready QR card: print it, scan it, watch it. Put the QR on table cards or entry screens at your venue; anyone with a phone scans and watches the auction live. Instant loading, no app required, live updates.

Paddle stickers

At the top of the page you will find the Support AuctionXI card with printable stickers for your bid paddles: the AuctionXI shield on the deep green backdrop. Download one sticker as an image, or a ready-to-print A4 sheet with four stickers and dashed cut guides. Stick them on the paddles your teams raise during bidding - it looks sharp on camera and helps other organizers discover AuctionXI.

The pre-flight checklist

Every failing item has a shortcut to the page that fixes it. The Launch Auction button stays disabled until all required items pass.

Going live

1. Press Launch Auction.
2. A confirmation appears with the exact consequence: once launched, all settings become read-only. You can only manage scenes and run the auction from the Operator panel.
3. Press Yes, launch it.

The moment you launch: the tournament turns Live, the Operator page appears in the sidebar, both screens start on the Branded Animation scene with Sync turned on and Mirror turned off (adjust either from the Operator panel), your viewer links go live and the 5-day auction window begins.

1. Pick a player

• Pick Player - type a serial number into the Player ID or Sr No box and press Pick (or Enter).
• Random Picker - press Random Player to draw someone matching your filters: status (Available or Unsold (re-auction)), your pricing category if you configured one, and any Dropdown player field. This is also how unsold players get a second round.

2. Drive the bidding

• Bid Increment - one green button per increment you configured in Settings (for example +0.05, +0.25, +1), plus a red minus button to step back down.
• Manual Bid - type any amount and press Set to jump the price directly. Bids cannot be negative and can go up to 99999999.9999.
• Current Bidder - tap the team that holds the bid. The Show teams as toggle switches the grid between Names and Logos; Clear removes the bidder. With purse protection on, teams that cannot afford the current bid are dimmed (but stay tappable) and the panel warns when no team can afford it.
• Every price change clears the current bidder. Any increment tap, minus tap or Manual Bid Set removes the selected team, so the flow is always: set the price, then tap the team that holds it. If Sold looks disabled after a price move, this is why - re-tap the buying team.

3. Sold or Unsold

1. Press Sold (needs a current bidder) or Unsold.
2. A confirmation shows everything at stake. Sold opens Confirm Sale with the player, the Sale Price and the Buying Team; Unsold opens Mark as Unsold and the player re-enters the unsold pool.
3. Press Confirm Sale or Confirm Unsold. Enter confirms, Escape cancels.

With purse protection on, a sale that would break a money or squad limit (team is full, cannot pay, or would be unable to fill its minimum squad afterwards) makes the app explain the exact problem and ask Sell anyway? so nothing slips through unnoticed - you can always override. With purse protection off, no such checks run and every sale goes straight through.

4. The 15 second undo window

Right after every Sold or Unsold, a red Action applied bar appears with an Undo button counting down from 15 seconds. While that window is open the entire auction column (pick, random, bids, bidder, sold, unsold) is frozen so nothing can pile on top of a decision you might reverse.

• Press Undo and a green banner confirms: undo successful, the screens are updating, one moment. The sale is reversed and the purse restored - and the player goes straight back on the auction block with the bid amount and bidding team exactly as they were, so you can continue the bidding from that point instead of re-picking the player.
• Let it run out and the controls unlock; if you try too late the app tells you the undo window has passed and the sale stands.

5. Pause, scenes and the big screens

• Pause Auction / Resume Auction - pausing sends both screens to the Pause Screen and freezes the controls; resuming restores exactly the scenes that were showing before.
• Switch Scene - a grid of every enabled scene, with a Projector / Overlay tab to choose the target. Scenes that need a pick (a team, a sponsor, a category, a countdown) open a small configure panel first, then Activate.
• Sync scene on both screens - keeps both screens on the same scene. Pick a scene for either one and the other follows automatically. Turning it on snaps the overlay to whatever the projector is showing right now.
• Mirror projector layout on overlay- makes the overlay use the projector's full design instead of its own slimmer version. The scene stays the same; only the look changes. Turn it on along with Sync to make both screens look identical.
• Live Preview - small live thumbnails of the projector and overlay. Click one to open the real view in a new tab.

6. Activity, results and ending

• Recent Activity - a running log of picks, bids, sales and pauses. Undone actions show struck through.
• Results - live standings with a Teams tab (purse, spent, left and each signed player) and a Players tab.
• End Auction - the final act. You must type the tournament name to confirm, because as the dialog says: this permanently ends the auction, it cannot be reversed, both screens switch to the Auction Complete scene and the whole auction becomes read-only for everyone. With purse protection on, if teams are still below the minimum squad size the app lists them and asks End anyway?

If your connection drops mid-auction a red bar warns that bid controls are disabled while reconnecting; everything unlocks and refreshes by itself once you are back online.

What you need

• OBS Studio - free streaming software from obsproject.com (Windows, Mac, Linux).
• Your OBS Overlay link - from the Viewer Links page.
• A camera - a webcam or a camera connected to your computer.
• A YouTube account - with live streaming enabled (YouTube may take up to 24 hours to enable it the first time, so do this in advance).

Set up OBS step by step

1. Install and open OBS Studio. In the Scenes panel (bottom left), click + to create a Scene.
2. In the Sources panel, click + and add a Video Capture Device. Pick your camera. This is the picture: the auctioneer, the stage, the room.
3. Click + again and add a Browser source ON TOP of the camera (drag it above the camera in the Sources list if needed). Set the URL to your OBS Overlay link, width 1920 and height 1080.
4. In the same Browser source settings, uncheck Shutdown source when not visible and check Refresh browser when scene becomes active.
5. That is it. The overlay has a transparent background, so it floats over your camera like TV graphics. With Overlay Layout set to Side card the bidding card sits on the right; with Bottom strip it sits low across the bottom, clear of faces either way.

No camera? Stream the graphics only

You do not need a camera to stream. If you just want the auction screens on YouTube, you stream the AuctionXI graphics on their own, on a solid background. It is the same recipe with two changes:

1. The simplest route: turn on Mirror projector layout on overlayon the Operator page (see Sync and mirror in the Running the auction section). The overlay then renders the projector's full solid design for every scene - one switch, done.
2. Prefer the overlay's own slimmer layouts instead? Then note that Background Mode is a per-scene setting: on the Scenes page, select each scene you plan to show and set its overlay Background Mode to Solid. A scene left on Transparent will stream see-through.
3. In OBS, skip the Video Capture Device (the camera). Add only the Browsersource with your OBS Overlay link at 1920 x 1080 - that single source fills the whole stream.
4. Everything else - Go live on YouTube, the bitrate, the stream key - is exactly the same as above.

Overlay tips

• Keep every scene's overlay Background Mode on Transparent (the default) while streaming with a camera; that is what lets the camera show through. It is a per-scene setting, so only scenes you deliberately changed will differ.
• Switch scenes to Solid only when the overlay IS the picture, for example a graphics-only stream with no camera at all.
• Mirror wins over Background Mode:while Mirror projector layout on overlay is on, the overlay always renders the projector's solid look, whatever the Scenes page says. Turn Mirror off to get transparency back.
• The projector link is a full solid screen by design; use it for the venue screen, not as an OBS overlay.

Go live on YouTube

1. Open YouTube Studio, click Create, then Go live.
2. Copy the Stream key from the stream settings.
3. In OBS go to Settings, then Stream. Set Service to YouTube and paste the key.
4. In Settings, then Output, set the video bitrate to 4500 to 6000 Kbps for 1080p at 30 frames per second. That is plenty for an auction.
5. Click Start Streaming in OBS. Your YouTube watch page is now the link to share alongside the Smart Link.

The venue projector

• Open the Projector / TV link on the computer feeding the big screen and make it fullscreen (press F11, or use the fullscreen button on the page).
• Keep the operator on a separate laptop. The projector machine just displays; the operator machine controls.
• Use stable internet for both, and remember the rule from the Terms: the operator controls run from one screen and one browser session at a time.

Troubleshooting

Media (results and downloads)

The Media page is where everything from your auction lives once it ends. There is nothing to set up in advance: the moment your tournament ends, this sidebar item lights up and the downloads unlock.

• A results email, automatically - when the auction ends we email a congratulations note to your account email with the full results spreadsheet attached and a button back to this page. You do not configure recipients; it goes to you, the organizer.
• Results spreadsheet - one Excel file with a Summary sheet (every team, what they spent and their remaining purse, plus the tournament totals), a colour-coded sheet per team listing that squad with every detail, and an Unsoldsheet. The per-team sheets include each player's email and phone number - handy for you as the organizer, but remember that before forwarding the file to anyone else.
• Scene images - pick any results screen (Team Squad, Team Finances, All Teams, Team Comparison, Tournament Stats, Top 3 Players, Category Stats, Unsold Players, Sponsor Spotlight, Special Mentions), choose what to show and save it as a high-resolution picture, exactly as it looks on the projector.

Account Settings

• Profile - your full name, your sign-in email (read-only) and a contact number. The number can be set once and cannot be changed later.
• Security - change your password, or set one if you signed up with Google so you can log in either way.
• Notifications - tournament updates (your auction going live, results and important alerts) are always on; the Offers & news emails are the one thing you can toggle.
• Danger Zone - permanently delete your account and all associated data via an email confirmation. Deletion is blocked while you have live tournaments; end them first.

My Auctions - for your players

Players are people too. Anyone who signs in with the same email an organizer used on their player profile gets a My Auctions page listing every auction they took part in, with their outcome: sold to which team and for how much, unsold or still available.