Archive and delete

Archive

Archiving hides a division from the console and the public site — but keeps every result. Restore it from the competition's Settings → Archived divisions: restoring re-checks your plan's division quota, and is refused while the competition itself is completed or archived (a finished competition takes no new divisions).

Use it for: last season's divisions cluttering the console, or a division created by mistake after matches were played.

Archiving and your division limit

Whether archiving hands the slot back depends on one thing — whether the division was ever really used:

• Nothing recorded yet — the slot comes straight back. Set a division up with the wrong sport, the wrong entrant kind or the wrong format and you can archive it and start again at no cost. Publishing a division isn't using it; only a result is.
• Results recorded — the slot stays with that division, archived or not. So archiving isn't a way to run more divisions than your plan allows, and last season's finished divisions still count.

A recorded result means a fixture that was decided, finalized or forfeited — or one abandoned but still carrying a real verdict, like a match awarded to one side or settled by a rain rule. A match abandoned with no result doesn't count.

So if you're at your division limit and the count looks wrong, this is usually why: an archived division that was played is still holding its place. The console says so at both ends: before you archive, and at the refusal.

What the Danger zone tells you before you archive

On the division's Settings tab → Danger zone, the two cases above read differently — because they cost different things:

• Archiving would keep the slot spent. An amber note sits above the Archive button: "This division has recorded results, so archiving it will not free a division slot." The confirm step says the same thing rather than the usual line — the division disappears from your console and the public site, nothing is destroyed, you can restore it, but the slot does not come back.
• Archiving is free. No note, and the confirm step says what it always said: the division stops counting against your plan.

Nothing is blocked either way — this is a price named before the click rather than after it. Without it you could archive a played division, see fewer divisions on screen than your plan allows, and later meet a paywall with no visible cause.

If our team has waived that division's slot, the warning is gone and the ordinary confirm step is back, because the archive really is free by then.

When a limit refusal blames the archive

The same rule from the other end: you're refused a division while the console shows fewer divisions than your plan allows. Both refusals name the cause:

• the division wizard, when creating one is refused;
• Settings → Archived divisions, when restoring one is refused.

Both add the same line under the upgrade panel: "Divisions with recorded results count toward your limit even after they are archived."

It only appears when those archived divisions really are the reason. If the divisions you can see already fill the limit on their own, releasing an archived one would change nothing — so the line stays away rather than pointing you at something that isn't the cause. What helps then is a bigger limit, or archiving a division you can see that never recorded a result.

Delete

Delete permanently removes a division — allowed only while it has no recorded play. Once results exist you'll be offered archive instead: results are a shared record (players point at them), so they never silently vanish.

An archived division can be purged permanently after 30 days in the archive — a deliberate cool-off, not a second delete button.

Common questions

Does archiving free a Community slot? Only if that division never recorded a result. Once a result exists the slot stays with it for good, so archiving divisions won't get you back under quota after a downgrade — completing or archiving whole competitions is the lever there (what downgrading freezes).

A slot got used up by accident — am I stuck with it? No. Our team can waive a slot that was genuinely burned by mistake; get in touch with the organisation and the division in question. It's a support request rather than a setting. Archive the division first — a waiver releases the slot an archived division is still holding. Once it's done that division stops counting straight away: the slot is back in your count, the Danger zone stops warning about it, and the refusal notes above stop naming it.

Where do I find these? The division's Settings tab → Danger zone.

Who can archive or delete? Owners and admins; both actions require typing the division's name to confirm and land in the org audit trail.