The best combat sports event software (2026)

There is no single "fight night platform" category, which is why this question is so hard to answer by searching. The tools promoters get recommended fall into three groups that solve genuinely different problems, and most of the frustration comes from buying one when you needed another.

This guide sets out what each group does, names the tools in each, and gives you the questions to ask before you pick. Every figure quoted here comes from the vendor's own public pages and was checked in September 2026. Prices change, so check before you commit.

A declaration, since it affects how you should read this: we build one of the platforms in the third group. That also means the numbers we quote about how fight nights actually sell are ours rather than borrowed. Across the combat events run on SHWDWN, about 56.4% of ticket sales arrive through a fighter's own link rather than the promoter's own marketing, and checkout add-ons like parking and merch are worth roughly 15% on top of ticket revenue. Where a competitor is the better answer below, we say so.

The three kinds of tool

The first group is general ticketing platforms — Eventbrite, Skiddle, Fatsoma, Ticket Tailor. They are good at what they do: a checkout that converts, a listing fans can find, and reporting on what sold. What none of them have is a fight card, a way to attribute a ticket to the fighter who sold it, or a way to pay that fighter. On a card where fighters sell most of the tickets, that means the most important number in your event lives in a spreadsheet you maintain by hand.

The second group is matchmaking and fight-card software — Blue6, MyNextMatch, Smoothcomp, and SHWDWN. These build the card: fighter registration, matchmaking, bout sheets and records. They split on *who does the admin*. The traditional model is gym-submission: other gyms log into your event and enter their boxers, which is what Blue6 is built around. The other model is fighter-led, which is how SHWDWN works — fighters make their own profiles, register their interest in your show, and accept or decline bouts on their phone, so you matchmake from a board that filled itself instead of chasing gyms on WhatsApp.

The third group is platforms that run the commercial side — ticketing and per-fighter sales attribution, and in principle payouts and streaming alongside them. Bokst does ticketing, fight cards and fighter sales links. SHWDWN is the only platform in this guide that does the whole set: attribution, automated fighter payouts through Stripe, and pay-per-view streaming in one system.

Note that SHWDWN is the one name in both groups, which is the whole design: the card and the money are the same problem viewed twice, and splitting them across two tools is what puts fighter payouts back into a spreadsheet.

What to actually evaluate

Ignore feature lists for a moment. On a grassroots or mid-scale card, four things decide whether the event is worth running.

Who sells the tickets, and can you prove it. If fighters drive your sales, you need per-fighter attribution that works without the buyer having to pick the right name from a dropdown. Ask whether attribution survives a buyer who clicks a fighter link, leaves, and comes back later — that is where most tracking quietly fails.

How fighters get paid. Commission on tickets sold is the norm at this level. Ask whether the platform calculates and pays it, or whether it hands you a CSV and you do bank transfers on the Monday.

What it costs you versus what it costs your buyer. A per-event licence fee and a buyer-paid booking fee are not comparable numbers. Work out both, on your real ticket price and your real expected volume.

Whether people who cannot attend can still buy. Pay-per-view is the difference between selling to a room and selling to everyone who knows the fighters. Most tools in every group have no streaming at all.

General ticketing platforms

Eventbrite has the largest audience and the strongest local search presence, which genuinely helps a first show. Its UK fee is 6.95% + £0.59 per ticket. There is no combat functionality of any kind.

Fatsoma is widely used by UK nightlife and white-collar promoters, largely because of its rep-link system — you can give each seller a tracked link and see what they sold. That is the closest a general platform gets to fighter attribution, though it is built for promo reps rather than fighters, and it does not pay them. Its booking fee is 10% with a £1 minimum.

Ticket Tailor charges a flat £0.60 per ticket on pay-as-you-go rather than a percentage, which makes it the cheapest option by some distance if your tickets are expensive and you need nothing combat-specific.

Skiddle is strong on UK event discovery. Its booking fee is 10% + £0.27 per ticket with a £1 minimum, and delivery or processing charges of £0.50 to £3.00 may apply on top.

Full comparisons: Eventbrite · Fatsoma · Ticket Tailor · Skiddle.

Matchmaking and fight-card software

Blue6 is UK fight-night and gym-management software. Its Event Manager covers interclub entries from multiple gyms, smart matchmaking, automated bout sheets, weigh-in tracking, digital waivers, live scorecards and bout outcomes. Pricing is per event with the first event free for six months — their pricing page lists £50 per Event Pass and their homepage says £99 per event, so confirm which applies before you buy. A separate Club Manager subscription covers memberships and classes at £40 a month plus £1 per member per month. Ticketing is a public event page where spectators book a place, sitting alongside the door list and bout sheet.

MyNextMatch is a federation-scale platform: membership and club management, registrations, brackets, check-in, weigh-ins, rankings, digital ID cards, and Olymedic, a digital medical passport for tracking athlete medical records and clearances. If you are working closely with a governing body or need serious medical record-keeping, this is the most thorough option in this group. It is built around competition and federation administration rather than promoter ticket economics, and its pricing is unclear — you book a demo.

Smoothcomp is tournament and bracket software widely used across grappling and MMA, with a boxing tournament module. Like MyNextMatch it is built around competition logistics — registration, seeding, brackets, weigh-ins — rather than promoter ticket economics. It is the right tool for a multi-round tournament and the wrong one for a 10-bout show you are selling tickets to.

SHWDWN takes the fighter-led route. Fighters build and maintain their own profiles and records, register interest in your event through a form you publish, and accept or decline bouts from the app, so the chasing that normally eats your week happens without you. You matchmake from that board, order the card, and change it as bouts fall through, and every fighter you place is already connected to their own sales link and payout, so the card you build is the payout run you settle.

Platforms that run the commercial side

Bokst is a UK combat-sports platform covering event management, ticketing, fight cards and fighter profiles, and it gives fighters tools to track and sell their own tickets. Its booking fee is 9.5%, paid by the buyer. It has no streaming and no checkout add-ons.

SHWDWN — us, so weigh this accordingly, and everything here is checkable on the pricing and product pages. Fight cards, in-person tickets and pay-per-view on the same event. Every fighter gets their own sales link and each ticket is attributed to whoever sold it automatically. Fighter purses pay out through Stripe Connect rather than by bank transfer. Checkout add-ons sell merch and parking alongside the ticket. QR check-in at the door works offline when venue signal drops. There is an embed so you can sell from your own website, and a fan app on iOS and Android. The promoter pays nothing: no subscription, no per-event fee, no cut of face value. Buyers pay 7.5% with a £2.00 minimum, card processing included, so on a £25 ticket the fee is £2.00.

Digital waivers, weigh-in tracking, medical clearances, and multi-gym submission portals with weight-class matchmaking are on the way. If you need them for a card you are running soon, get in touch and we will get them ready for you.

How to choose

If you are running a white-collar or fighter-sold card, ticket attribution and payouts dominate everything else, because that is where both your revenue and your admin actually live. You want a platform that does the card and the money together.

If the card itself is the hard part, the question is which matchmaking model fits you. If your boxers come to you through affiliated gyms and you want those gyms entering them directly, with weigh-in sheets and ruleset mapping per bout, Blue6 is built for that and is the more complete tool. If your fighters come to you as individuals, the fighter-led model does more of the work for you: they build their own profiles, register interest themselves, and accept bouts from their phones.

If you are running a one-off show with no fighter commission, you might reach for a general ticketing platform, but check the maths before you do. On a £25 ticket your buyer pays £2.00 on SHWDWN against £2.33 on Eventbrite, £2.50 on Fatsoma and £2.77 on Skiddle, and the promoter pays nothing either way. There is not much of a cost case for the general tools even when you need none of the combat features.

If fans outside the room would pay to watch, you need pay-per-view, and that narrows the field to almost nothing — of every tool in this guide, only SHWDWN streams.

Whatever you pick, run the fee maths on your own numbers before you sign. A £50 per-event licence and a 9.5% buyer fee land very differently on 200 tickets at £20 than on 1,000 at £35.