What is in the index, and what is not

The matrix below is the whole index counted two ways. It is generated from the live directory rather than typed out, so it cannot drift from what the table actually holds, and a cell that fills in stops being a gap here the moment the listing publishes.

The directory is cut in two before it is cut by sport, because the two halves are bought by different people. A youth listing is entered by a club or travel team with parents paying; an adult one is entered by a player who signs themselves up, or by a captain assembling a roster of adults who each pay a share. Every listing carries its division, and the tabs at the top of the index switch between them.

A weekend that runs youth and adult brackets on the same days appears twice, once in each index, because a listing sits in one division and a visitor enters one bracket. The two rows carry the same venue, dates and terms; what differs is the classes you can enter, and sometimes the game guarantee that goes with them. Both say so on the listing rather than leaving you to work out why a name is in the table twice.

The split is not only a filter. Cost medians are computed per division as well as per sport, so an adult listing is graded against what adult events charge rather than against a figure the youth half of the index sets. Higher-graded alternatives on a listing are drawn from its own division for the same reason: a recommendation the reader cannot enter is not a recommendation.

The adult half is much the newer of the two and is thinner everywhere. Youth is what the index held first and is still most of what is in it. It now has listings in every region group.

Ice hockey has a handful of large aggregators, which is why the first few hundred records were all hockey and why it remains the deepest sport in the index. The other eleven have nothing comparable. Their coverage is assembled operator by operator from organizers’ own event pages, which is slower, and it shows in the counts above rather than being smoothed over.

Boxing and American football are the thinnest, and for structural reasons rather than research ones. In boxing, most documented competition at this level is national-team play, which the first exclusion below removes, and most of the rest is professional, which the second removes; what is left is the club-entered open internationals, and there are genuinely fewer of them. American football has the same shape read a country at a time: almost everything documented outside the United States is national-team play, so its coverage here is American only for now, and the grid above says so rather than being padded to look complete.

Volleyball, golf, pickleball and martial arts are the newest four and are shallow for a third reason again: they were filed recently, and they are filed from the operators we could read rather than from a circuit. Three of the four are also structurally American right now — pickleball’s documented amateur calendar barely exists outside North America yet, and the junior golf and grappling circuits publish in the United States and quote on application almost everywhere else. Volleyball is the exception and has the widest first-pass spread of the four. None of these cells is padded, and the grid above is the honest picture of where each of them stands.

We describe this as coverage, never as completeness, and you should read any claim to the contrary on this site as a mistake worth reporting.

Every sport-and-region pair with nothing filed against it, listed rather than left for you to find by filtering into an empty table. None of these cells is padded to look fuller than it is.

• Ice hockeyNo listings in Latin America
• SoccerFiled in every region
• American footballNo listings in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific
• LacrosseNo listings in Latin America, Asia-Pacific
• BaseballNo listings in Europe, Middle East & Africa
• BasketballFiled in every region
• VolleyballNo listings in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa
• TennisNo listings in Canada, Latin America, Middle East & Africa
• PickleballNo listings in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific
• GolfNo listings in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Middle East & Africa
• BoxingNo listings in Latin America, Middle East & Africa
• Martial artsNo listings in Canada, Latin America, Middle East & Africa

Boxing’s and American football’s empty regions are the clearest examples of a real gap. Latin America and the Middle East & Africa run youth boxing, and football is played on every continent, but what is documented in those cells is overwhelmingly national-team competition, and a club cannot enter it. We would rather show you nothing than list something you cannot get into. Volleyball, golf, pickleball and martial arts have the most empty cells of any sport here, and theirs are a different kind of gap: those events exist and are entered by clubs and individuals every week, and we have simply not read them yet. That is on us, not on the sport, and it is the research the next pass does.

Both paths are labelled on every record. Most were compiled by our research team from the organizer’s public event page. The rest were submitted by the organizer, which also claims the record if we had already written one. A submission is checked against the organizer’s own event page before it publishes, because an organizer’s submission sets the facts the GameVoyaGrade reads.

Nothing a stranger sends us — a listing or a review — reaches a public grade, ranking or average until a person has read it.