Associations

An association is the organisation that runs competitions, typically a district or local badminton association such as Swindon & District BA. It is one of the four first-class audiences on Badminton Clubhouse (clubs, associations, counties, players) and sits as the buyer when committees come looking for "league software".

If you're searching for "my league", this is the right place. The org you affiliate to is the association; the league is one of the competitions it runs.

What an association is, and isn't

| Term | Meaning |

|---|---|

| Association | The org. The committee. The fixture secretary. The tenant on Badminton Clubhouse. The buyer. (Example: Swindon & District Badminton Association.) |

| Competition | A specific thing being played, a league season, a cup, a ladder. An association runs several of these in a season. |

| League (colloquial) | Either (a) a competition with the league format (round-robin home/away, divisions, table) or (b) shorthand for the association + its flagship league competition. Use the precise word when it matters. |

The simplest way to remember it: an association runs competitions; one of those competitions is usually a league. "My league" means both the association you belong to and the competitive nights it organises.

How it relates to your club

Clubs are affiliated to associations, not nested inside them. The relationship is many-to-many and optional:

• A club can be affiliated to zero, one, or several associations.
• An association has many affiliated clubs.
• A club doesn't need an association to use Badminton Clubhouse (standalone clubs are fully supported), and an association doesn't need a county above it (associations with county_id = NULL are perfectly valid, informal or regional associations exist without a CBA).

When your club is affiliated to an association on the platform, the association can run competitions that pull in your teams, your fixtures, and your results without anyone re-typing things into a spreadsheet.

Competitions an association can run

A competition is defined by three independent choices:

| Choice | Common values for an association |

|---|---|

| Entry mode | Team (the most common, clubs enter teams) · Individual · Pair |

| Format | League · Knockout (cup) · Round-robin · Ladder |

| Discipline | Mixed, men's, ladies', open, doubles, singles |

Examples of competitions a district association typically runs in a season:

• The league. Team-entry, league-format, multiple divisions with promotion and relegation. The classic Wednesday-night fixture.
• The cup. Team-entry, knockout format. Single-elimination, sometimes with seeding.
• The plate. A knockout consolation competition for teams knocked out of the cup early.
• A summer mixed event. Pair-entry, round-robin or knockout, run as a one-off.

The same association can run all of these. Each is its own competition; each has its own entry list, fixtures, results, and tables.

Where you land if you administer one

If you administer an association, it appears on the unified Admin page, the single landing surface for every tenant you administer, across associations, counties, and clubs. The Admin roles entry shows up in your /me avatar dropdown (and the tenant header dropdown) only when you hold at least one accepted, non-revoked admin assignment.

An association admin assignment maps to a tenant_type = 'association' row in admin_assignments, and the admin shell lives at /associations/{slug}/admin/*. The old /leagues/{slug}/... URL is permanently redirected to /associations/{slug}/..., your bookmarks will still work, just one extra hop.

Why "association" and not "league"

Earlier versions of the platform used "league" for both the org and the competition. In practice they're different things, the moment an association runs a cup competition alongside its league, the two collapse-into-one breaks down. Treating the association as the tenant and the competition as the entity matches how UK badminton actually works and keeps the data model honest.

Search still works either way: typing "league" in help will surface this article, the Four audiences guide, and Competitions (admin).

Related Articles

• Who is Badminton Clubhouse for?
• Counties
• Competitions (admin)
• Player Area Guide