MIHWA & HockeySYTE.
Growing a Masters tournament into a truly world-class international event — and, this year, redesigning the whole competition so every game matters.
From a static website to a live World Cup hub.
The Masters Inline Hockey World Cup (MIHWA) is the premier international championship for over-38 inline hockey players. When we first partnered with MIHWA in 2022, the tournament was already respected on the floor — but its digital presence lagged behind. A manually updated website, slow turnaround from a web developer, and no live stats meant fans and players couldn't truly follow the action in real time. Together we've transformed MIHWA into a modern, data-driven World Cup experience with live scoreboards, pro-level livestreams, and record-breaking engagement.
A masters event, modernised
Grown from just 5 national teams in 2010 to a four-division World Cup — Masters, Veterans, Legends, and from 2025 a brand-new Women's Masters division. In 2025 a record 45 teams took part: 15 Masters, 11 Vets, 14 Legends and 5 Women's teams, from Europe, North America, South America, Oceania and Asia-Pacific.
Explosive growth in teams
Team numbers have surged: 25 teams in 2022 (Italy), 29 in 2023, 34 in 2024 (Spain), and 45 in 2025 (Germany). The introduction of the Women's division in 2025 — capped off by a USA vs France Gold Medal overtime thriller — shows just how quickly the tournament is expanding.
Engagement up 60%+
Pageviews have skyrocketed since the move to HockeySYTE. From a manually updated site with limited traffic, MIHWA now enjoys 170,000+ pageviews (2024) and 274,811 (2025), as fans return again and again for live scores, stats, brackets and video.
From fragmented tools to one platform.
Before 2022, MIHWA relied on a traditional website that needed a web developer to post results and updates — often at a high cost and with significant delay. There were no live stats, no centralised fixtures engine, and no way to reuse data for scoreboards or streams. Volunteers juggled separate systems for timekeeping, scoreboards, and stats entry.
With HockeySYTE, MIHWA now runs schedules, live scoring, player stats, standings, brackets and media from a single platform. Every game flows through the same system: scorers update the game once and it automatically powers the website, the live Jumbotron scoreboard, the livestream scorebug and post-game stats — all in real time.
We didn't give them better players. We changed the schedule.
This year we went beyond the platform. We analysed four years of results, found the problem quietly killing the tournament, and rebuilt the competition format around a single idea: make every game matter.
Ireland went home heroes.
In 2025 they lost every single game by 15–20 goals — five games, five blowouts. In 2026, same team, same rink, their blowout rate dropped to zero. More goals, real games, and the first World Cup wins in the team's history.
Fair on paper: spread the teams evenly so every pool has equal total strength. Tidy — but it optimises for balance, not stakes, and mathematically guarantees mismatches like USA vs Ireland. A game that should never be scheduled.
Pool B → seeds 2, 5, 8, 11, 14
Rank the teams and group them by level — Elite, Middle, Developing. Peers play peers, so almost every pool game is close. When 2026 added weaker newcomers (China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Colombia), tiering absorbed them instead of flooding the schedule with mismatches.
We don't serve C1 up to A1 in the traditional 1-vs-8 bracket — that's just another guaranteed blowout. Instead B1 plays C1, giving the lower-division winner a winnable path and a real shot at a semifinal. With double the middle and developing teams as elite teams, we want them involved and playing for something real.
Because the Elite pool is brutal, finishing near the top doesn't buy an easy quarterfinal. A2 — second in the Elite pool — drew A5, the defending champions, who'd landed in fifth. A2 expected the usual 1-vs-8 and pushed to revert the schedule, but the other teams stood by the format as set, so it held. The result was a blockbuster: A2 lost in overtime in an absolutely legendary game. Sometimes controversy isn't a bad thing — it creates the drama and narrative that make a tournament exciting.
How close the game was, how many goals you scored, and whether you had a real chance to win. 2026 was the most fun year on record — and almost every returning team had a better time.
A bracket fans can print and fill in.
We built custom, print-ready bracket pages for every division — the tiered pools, the quarters-to-medals knockout, the advancement key and the tiebreakers, all on one A3 sheet. As results come in, the online version fills itself; fans grab the printable to follow along rinkside.
One operator, full pro-level game presentation.
MIHWA's main rink features a giant Jumbotron. Traditionally that needed two skilled operators — one for the arena scoreboard, one for stats. With HockeySYTE, the main rink runs from a single scoring console, cutting the skilled-operator requirement in half for the busiest games.
Integrated game console
One scorer controls game time, goals, penalties and shots from a single screen. The Jumbotron, website and live stats all update instantly, eliminating duplicate work and scoreboard mismatches — in a 7-day, 8am–11pm, two-rink schedule.
Volunteer-friendly & stress-reducing
New local volunteers join every year. The intuitive scoring interface means they can learn the system quickly — often in a single game — so organisers can rotate morning, mid-day and evening shifts instead of relying on the same exhausted crew all day. Less burnout, more consistent operations.
Custom goal horns & arena sound
The console plugs straight into the rink sound system. Each country has its own goal song — Australia rocking AC/DC, the USA blasting classic anthems, France triggering their own horn. Every goal erupts with that team's soundtrack, making the whole event feel like a pro show, not a tournament in a big, quiet rink.
A broadcast operation that runs itself.
120+ streamed games, two rinks, a tiny crew of volunteers. The hard part isn't the cameras — it's the turnaround: the moment a playoff spot is decided, the next stream needs a title, a thumbnail, a slot and the right stream key. We automated the whole chain.
The bracket fills — the next playoff matchup is now known.
Correct teams, good title & description, stream key mapped to the right rink.
No swapping URLs per game. The crew just points the camera — it all just works.
Pro-level auto scorebug
The livestream uses the same live data that drives the Jumbotron for a TV-style scorebug. Scores, penalties and time update automatically on screen — no more “guess the score” streams.
Thumbnails & highlights at scale
Consistent, eye-catching thumbnails for every one of 120+ games, boosting click-through. Auto highlight clips and up-vote tools make pulling the Top 5 goals of the tournament effortless — no scrubbing through days of footage.
Goal & penalty announcements
We debuted automated goal and penalty announcements this year — and even ran a German announcer for some of the Germany games. Combined with each country’s goal horn, the arena sounds like a real broadcast.
Multi-language admin
With referees and scorers from all over the world, English-only tools are a barrier. We added Spanish and German admin translations so local volunteers can score in their own language — less confusion, faster training, more accurate data.
Every game, written up in seconds.
One of MIHWA's most-loved features: an automatic post-game article written within seconds of the final buzzer. Each recap reads like a professional sports journalist wrote it — momentum swings, key performances, contextual stakes, standings implications and upcoming fixtures — using real data from the game. Players share their write-ups on social; organisers no longer manually recap 120+ games.
See AI & Claude In a final that swung both ways, the USA weathered a third-period surge from Czechia before taking it in a shootout that will be talked about for years. The result caps an unbeaten knockout run and reshapes the all-time medal table…
A homepage as loud as the event itself.
We completely customised MIHWA's homepage for World Cup '26 — a Garmisch-themed hub with a live countdown, division standings, news, the goal-horn wall, merch, sponsors and the app, all pulling from the same tournament data.
Fans didn't just visit. They stayed.
Google Analytics, mihwa.hockeysyte.com, 1 June – 21 July 2026.
Running a major tournament with limited staff?
HockeySYTE helps events like MIHWA halve their scoreboard workload, keep fans glued to live stats, and deliver a broadcast-ready experience — without a pro-sports budget or a huge control room. And if your format needs work, we'll help you fix it.
Get a personalized demo in minutes.
Send us your last event's results and we'll build you the same report you just saw — your top issues and a Fun Score for every team. Free.