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Host overview

Hosting a competition is a season-long project, and MusterSheet walks it in order. Every competition moves through the same pipeline, shown at the top of your management page:

Draft → Announced → Open → Locked → Live → Awards → Complete

Here's the arc, with a guide for each stage:

Hosting is a paid tier — free during the 2026 beta

Creating a competition requires the Host tier ($199/yr) or the full Program tier. During the 2026 beta season the first Create Competition click takes you to an unlock page where hosting is free for the season, one click, no card. Managing a competition you already created is never gated. Details in Create your competition.

  1. Create your competition — a draft takes two fields: a name and a date. Everything else comes after. (Hosted last year? Clone it and skip most of the setup.)
  2. Classes, fees & scoring setup — define your competition classes, registration fees, and the judging rubric. While you're in Settings, add your ticket link and weather policy.
  3. Invite your staff — co-host, registrar, announcer, volunteer coordinator, tabulator, and timing & penalties.
  4. Set up online payouts — ten minutes with Stripe, and card-paid registration fees land directly in your own account, in full.
  5. Open registration, then manage registrations as bands apply — approve, waitlist, assign classes, log mailed checks.
  6. Invite & manage judges — one judge (or several) per scoring section.
  7. Build the schedule — auto-generate the lineup, then drag, insert breaks, and notify bands.
  8. Set up the fan portal — enable shoutouts and Fan Favorite voting, then print the QR posters fans scan at the gate. Running a Drum Line Battle? Turn it on too.
  9. Competition day — run everything from the live Command Center, with the check-in station and cash station staffed by your volunteers.
  10. Scores, awards & publishing — the tab room computes and verifies a private draft, a host or co-host acting as Contest Director certifies it, you run the awards ceremony from the announcer's teleprompter, then Publish unlocks public results and every director's judges packet at once. Timing and rules incidents go through the separate Penalty Desk on the way.

Your management page

Everything lives in one place: open My Competitions, click your competition, then Manage in the Your Stations card (the Manage Settings button on My Competitions goes to the same place). The left sidebar has a tab for each job — Settings, Rubric, Classes & Fees, Awards, Registrations, Schedule, Judges, Staff, Vendors, Payments, Moderation, and Winners. The guides that follow walk each one.

You don't have to do this alone

Nearly everything a host can do, a Co-Host can do too — see Invite your staff. Give your booster president a co-host seat and split the load, especially on the day.

Your Stations

Open the competition (not the Manage page) and you'll find a Your Stations card listing every screen your roles let you open at this event — Announcer Booth, Band Check-In, Cash Station, Penalty Desk, Command Center, Tab Room, and Manage, each with a one-line reminder of what it's for. It's the fastest way in on competition day, and it's the only place the Tab Room and Penalty Desk are linked from. Volunteers and staff see the same card with just their own stations on it.