Organizer Guide - Swiss Unity League Season 2025
In this guide, we explain everything you need to know, to register your events for the SUL. If you wish to understand how League Points are awarded to players, and to see more information about the end-of-year Championship tournament, please also read the Player Guide.
Abstract
The Swiss Unity League (SUL) is a collaborative tournament series between various Magic: the Gathering event organizers in Switzerland. Only the best players will qualify for the end-of-year 2-day Championship tournament with 2.5k prizes.
Any organizer can register their tournament for the league to make it award League Points. Players need to collect these points in order to qualify for the Championship.
Eligible Tournaments
All Magic: the Gathering tournaments held in real life are eligible to award points for the SUL.
The 2025 season runs from 01.11.2024 until 31.10.2025 and qualifies for the SUL Championship in November 2025. During that time, you can register all of your MTG events for the league to make them award League Points to the participants. Afterwards the next season begins.
Tournament Types
There are 3 types of tournaments (SUL Regular, Regional, and Premier). To each of your tournaments, you can assign one of these types, which defines how many points your event will award.
To finance the prize pool of the Championship, organizers pay a fee to run SUL Premier and SUL Regional tournaments. The higher the fee that you pay, the more points your event will award to players. SUL Regular tournaments are free to organize.
SUL Regular
All your normal events (weekly, FNM, Prerelease) will be SUL Regular events. These events don't have a fee and allow you to award extra prizes in the form of League Points to your players for free. Therefore, if your budget is limited, it is still possible to participate in the league by running all of your events as SUL Regular and not paying any fees.
SUL Regional
If you wish to make your local events more attractive for people in your canton, you can turn them into SUL Regional events.
For each kind of event you organizer, one of those events per month can be SUL Regional.
Example: If you have a weekly modern event on Wednesday and a weekly legacy event on Friday, you can have among these events 1 Legacy and 1 Modern event be SUL Regional per month. Additionally, you can organize a Modern Regional event on a Saturday and a Legacy Regional event on a Sunday, both with top 8.
Running an SUL Regional event comes with a fee of CHF 1 per participant. Playoffs (top 8 or top 4) are optional for regional events. If your Regional event has playoffs then a further fee of CHF 20 needs to be paid.
SUL Premier
SUL Premier events are the most competitive events of the year. There's only a limited amount of SUL Premier events and hence people travel all around Switzerland to attend them.
Running an SUL Premier event comes with a fee of CHF 200.
Please contact us at least 1 month before your event for a 2025 SUL Premier event slot.
You may use these logos to label your events on your flyers or website
Tournament Type Overview
| Tournament Type | Limitation per organizer | Fee per Participant (in CHF) | Playoff Fee (in CHF) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | Unlimited | free | free |
| Regional | For each kind of event 1 Regional per month | 1.- | 20.- |
| Premier | Requires to request a slot | - | 200.- |
Organizational Overhead
We try to make participation in the league as easy as possible by automating many workflows on the website. Here are the remaining tasks required from the tournament organizer's side:
- Enter your events into the SUL calendar so that all of our 1000+ player can find them.
- At the end of each event, the results must be uploaded on the SUL website. We have integrations that allow you to directly import results from the following tournament apps: Eventlink/Companion, Aetherhub, Challonge, Melee, Spicerack, and MTGEvent. Alternatively, you can manually upload the results or use an Excel or CSV file.
- The fees will be calculated automatically, and you will receive an invoice every 2-3 months.
Example: Ajani wants to turn his Saturday Modern event with top 8 into an SUL Regional Event. He creates the event on the website, which is then advertised on the SUL calendar. Ajani's event runs well and attracts 22 players. During the event, he manages the pairings and results as usual with the Eventlink/Companion app. Once the event is over, Ajani downloads the results from Eventlink and uploads them on the SUL website, which immediately updates the ranking. Some time later, Ajani receives an invoice from the League for 22x1 + 20 = 42 CHF, which goes into the prize pool of the Championship.
SUL Guidelines
In the following we provide detailed rules about the SUL as a reference. In general reading everything above will be enough info to participate.
Tournaments participating in the Swiss Unity League must be “Magic: the Gathering” events held in real life. Digital SUL events on MTG Arena, or similar platforms are not allowed.
Magic Tournament Rules
SUL events must follow the official Magic Tournament Rules (MTR). The following additional rules apply:
- Number of Swiss Rounds
- For SUL Regular events, the number of Swiss rounds can be determined by the TO individually.
- For SUL Regional events without playoffs, the TO can decide the number of Swiss rounds, up to a maximum of 5.
- For events with playoffs (SUL Regional or Premier), the number of Swiss rounds and type of playoffs (top 4/8) must comply with “Appendix E—Recommended Number of Rounds in Swiss Tournaments” of the MTR.
Tournament Requirements
SUL Regional Events
For each kind of event you organize, you can have one event of this kind be SUL Regional. Here some examples:
- If you run competive 1k events in different formats, you can have one event of each format be SUL Regional per month.
- If you run a weekly recurring event, 1 event of this series can be SUL Regional per month.
- If you run 3 Prereleases on a weekend, you can have 1 of these be SUL Regional.
SUL Premier Events
- Premier events require approval. Please contact us at least one month prior to the event.
- SUL Premier events must be held on a Saturday or Sunday.
- Allowed formats include Limited, Modern, Legacy, and Pioneer.
- Competitive REL is mandatory.
- At least 1 judge is required for each Premier event.
- Players need to be able to preregister online for the event.
Deadlines
- In the last month of the Season (October), SUL Regional events must be announced in the SUL calendar at least 2 weeks in advance.
- Premier events must be announced in the SUL calendar at least 1 month in advance.
- Results must be uploaded within 1 month after an event is finished.
- At the end of the season, you have only 7 days to upload any remaining results.
Deviation from League Rules
If you wish to deviate from the league rules for a particular tournament, please contact us in advance.
Labeling Your Events
To ensure that SUL events are easily recognizable to players, it's important to label them consistently. Therefore, include the following details for each event in the calendar on your own website:
- Mention that the event is part of the Swiss Unity League and awards League Points.
- Specify the type of the event (SUL Regular/Regional/Premier).
- Provide a link to unityleague.ch for more information.
Additionally, you may use these logos to label your events on your flyers or website.
Redeem Championship Prizes
The prizes of the SUL Championship 2025 will be paid out in store credits of eligible organizers of SUL. Among all the TOs that offer their store credit (or other prizes), the players can choose freely where they want to redeem them.
To be eligible, a TO needs to pay at least CHF 400 in SUL fees during the Season 2025 (01.11.24-31.10.25).
Finances, Liability, and Sponsoring
The Swiss Unity League is financed through sponsorships and fees from organizers of SUL Regional and Premier events. The main organizer, the Leonin League association, assumes all financial liability for SUL. If you wish to sponsor the SUL, please contact us.
Swiss Unity League API
The Swiss Unity League offers an Application Programming Interface (API) which allows you to write plugins for the SUL website.
Some possible plugin ideas:
- Automatically create events on SUL when you add them to your shop's website.
- Or the other way around: display events on your shop based on what you created on the SUL.
- Import results from your custom tournament software.
- Use SUL data to calculate the standings of your in-store pauper league.
We provide some example code for the API as well as a playground to test your code without showing it on the SUL website. If you are interested in using it and need help, please let us know!