Seasons, series and circuits
Make a Friday night part of something, and say who qualifies before it starts.
A series is the night, not the evening
A series is the definition of a recurring night — every Friday at seven, this game, this venue. Each week materializes from it, so setting the night up is something you do once rather than fifty-two times.
Players can follow a series and be told when a new night goes on the calendar. They do not need an account to attend; they need one to be told.
A circuit is what the season adds up to
A circuit turns the results of many nights into one standing. You choose what a finish is worth, whether turning up scores anything, whether a monthly showcase counts double, and whether only somebody’s best few results count.
A circuit reads the nights inside its own window, in your store’s local dates. A Friday 8pm event is Saturday in UTC, and a season that counted in UTC would quietly drop the last night of the window.
Saying who qualifies, before anybody plays
The qualifying line is on the circuit page from the day it opens: the top so many, or everybody above a points total, or both. "Am I in?" is the only question a player has about a season, and it should be answerable without arithmetic.
Where there is a fixed number of seats, a seat held twice is a seat wasted — so if somebody in the qualifying places is already through, their seat passes to the next player who is not. An invitation is never wasted, and the page says so before anybody has to ask why they are in from ninth.
A points threshold works differently and deliberately: everybody over the line is in. Nothing is scarce there, so nothing passes down.