The Roller Derby World Cup Committee are pleased to be able to announce the pairings of teams for the first day of games at the 2018 Roller Derby World Cup in Greater Manchester, England, 1-4 February.

At this time, we can also announce the structure of the tournament, and some details of the scheduling.

Scheduling for the Roller Derby World Cup.

With 38 teams attending the 2018 RDWC, traditional group selection structures simply don’t scale for a 4 day event, on 4 tracks, whilst single elimination tournaments would be extremely unfair to the teams eliminated in the first round.

As a result, RDWC 2018 will be played as a three phase event.

Phase 1, Day 1, will consist of 38 games, each 30 minutes long. Across these games, each team will play exactly two opponents, selected via an algorithm fed by the results of a survey sent to each team.

The results of these games will be fed into a fair global ranking algorithm (“linear regression on loge score ratio”) to determine the opponents for Days 2 and 3, “Phase 2”.

Day 2 and 3 will consist of 38 games, each the full WFTDA standard games of 2 30 minute periods. Each team will play, again, exactly 2 opponents, selected on the basis of the estimated strengths from Day 1.

The result of phase 2 will be used to rank the teams provisionally, producing a Top 16, and a Top 8 within it. During the ranking calculation, we will get to enjoy the Upcoming Games Exhibition Bout, showcasing the derby skills of countries who could well be competing in the next World Cup.

At the end of Day 3, the Top 8 teams will begin a tournament to determine their final places, playing their first, Quarter Final games at the end of the day, as the start of Phase 3.

The final Day, Day 4, will complete the Top 8 tournament, with Semi Final (and Consolation) bouts leading into ranking bouts for 5th, 7th place… and the 3rd Place and Grand Final bouts.

Day 4 will also present consolation ranking bouts for the remaining Top 16 teams, and the chance to see the best of Junior Roller Derby from across the world in our second Exhibition bout.

Indicative Images of Schedule Structure

Games for Phase 1

The Phase 1 (Day 1) pairings have been calculated, and they are: