April 5 update: Congratulations to the 8 teams that advanced to the next round! Voting will run through Friday at midnight again for Round 2 – good luck!
We’re thrilled to unveil the brackets for the Outsports Team/League of the Year contest, sponsored by Gay Games VIII! Sixteen groups entered the contest this year, all of them worthy of the honor. Voting is now open!
To advance to the next round, a group must have the most votes in its one-on-one matchup. After each round, the votes are reset to zero and voting commences again. Once the winner of each bracket is determined, the final four will be judged by a panel of gay-sports experts who will choose the overall winner. On top of all the glory and adulation, the winner will receive one free general registration for Gay Games VIII in Cologne, Germany (July 31-Aug. 7), and $100 cash.
The voting each week will be conducted each week from Monday to Friday. The voting for each round will be:
March 29-April 2: Round 1.
April 5-9: Round 2.
April 12-16: Round 3.
April 19-23: The Championship Round!
One thing you may notice is that there are no seeds. We did that for several reasons, most importantly that we felt it would unfairly bias the voting. We want YOU to tell US what teams deserve to advance. To that end, there is no pattern to how each bracket is laid out; The first team listed in each bracket is not necessarily what might be considered the “top seed.”
Voting will take place on the discussion board of Outsports. If you’re not already a registered member of the discussion board, you will have to register to vote. This is to prevent individuals from skewing the results by voting hundreds of times (which happened last year). The new URL will be available every Monday morning.
Good luck to all the people involved, and keep checking back for updates and voting!