The league
Ascend
Ascend is Rival Court’s league. Clubs are permanent: they have an owner, a manager, a captain and a roster that carries between seasons. Players arrive through a draft, move by signing, release and trade, and every one of those movements leaves a record.
You do not apply for Challengers and nobody picks you off a list for it. You become eligible by playing the entry events, against a rule that is published below and evaluated the same way for everybody. Premier, the division above, also runs a paid direct entry — set out at the end of this page, because a rule people can only find out about by asking is not a published rule.
How you qualify
Any one of these three makes you eligible. They are evaluated from completed events only — an event you entered and did not finish is not evidence that you finished it.
ROUTE 1
Complete all three entry formats
Finish a Duel, a Comp Run 3s and a Comp Run 5s. Breadth: you have played every shape of basketball Rival Court runs.
ROUTE 2
Complete three seasons of one format
Three completed seasons of any single entry competition. Depth: you keep turning up to the same thing.
ROUTE 3
Complete a Comp Run 5s
The shortest route, and it is deliberate. Five-a-side is the closest entry format to Ascend basketball, so completing one is the most direct evidence that you can play it.
Sign in to see where you stand. Rival Court shows you the evidence behind the answer — which events counted, which rule you cleared or how far off it you are — rather than a yes or a no. A commissioner can also grant eligibility by override, and an override always carries a written reason.
Challengers eligibility is not a rating and cannot be bought. It is a record of what you have done. Your Rival Rating has no part in it, and neither does your subscription.
Premier direct entry
The one paid pathway Rival Court runs, stated here rather than left to be discovered.
What it is
Premier accepts a direct entry for a single season on payment of the entry fee. Settlement happens outside Rival Court; a commissioner or administrator verifies it and records the exception against your account, with the payment reference attached.
What it is not
It buys one season of Premier and nothing else. It is not a subscription and does not renew. It confers no role and no authority over anybody. It does not touch your Rival Rating, which is earned from play, and it writes no Challengers record you did not earn.
Rival Court reports the two apart and always will. A player admitted on merit is shown as having qualified; a player admitted by direct entry is shown as having entered. Both are in Premier on the same terms once the season starts — the difference is how they got there, and the record says which.
Promotion and relegation
Challengers is the entry division and Premier is above it. A club moves between them on what its team did.
What decides it
- Where the club finished in the table, or
- How far it went in the playoffs, or
- Whether it won the competition.
Each season’s rule is set before it ends, and every club gets a written outcome — including the ones that stayed.
What does not
No individual’s Rival Rating. A club goes up on its team’s result, and the database has no column in either movement table that could hold a player’s number — so this is a property of the schema rather than a promise.
A club that finishes in a promotion place and is not in good standing is held back, and its place is left unfilled rather than passed to the club below.
The divisions
No seasons have been run in this division yet.
No seasons have been run in this division yet.