Playing rights: is this player allowed to play?
How Profixio decides whether a person may be put on a team roster and into a match squad — licence, transfer, playing rights, club affiliation, age and class rules — where each check happens, and whether it warns, hides the player or blocks outright. The answer differs a lot between federations.
Looking for something else? Checking teams in at the tournament Finishing and signing the match protocol
"May this person actually be used?" is a different question from "does this person have a licence?".
Profixio answers it from up to five things:
- A licence — is the person registered and insured for the period that covers this tournament or series?
- A transfer — has the person moved between clubs, and from which date are they playable for the new club?
- Club affiliation — is the person a member of the club whose team they are being added to, or does the club hold the person's playing rights?
- Age and class — does the person fit the class's age and gender rules?
- Tournament rules — is the person already entered in this class, or in another tournament they are not allowed to combine with this one?
In most federations only the licence and the class rules are used. A federation can also use a sixth, stronger concept — playing rights (spelrätt) — which records, per sport, which single club a person is allowed to play for until a transfer moves it. That is the concept this page is named after, and the section "How playing rights are worked out" only applies where the federation uses it.
Two things are worth knowing before anything else:
- A licence follows the person, not the club. One licence per person per period. Which club paid for it is bookkeeping. So "the player is licensed at another club" does not automatically mean they cannot play for you.
- Most refusals are unannounced. Far more often than blocking with a message, Profixio simply does not offer the person in the list you are searching. If somebody is "not there", that is the check working, not a fault.
These three are constantly confused with each other. They answer different questions.
| Question it answers | Follows | Changes when | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence | Is the person registered and insured for this period? | The person | The period ends, or a new one is bought |
| Transfer | Has the person changed club, and from when? | The move | A transfer is completed and its playable-from date arrives |
| Playing rights | Which single club may use this person, per sport? | The person, per sport | A completed transfer, or an administrator's correction |
A few rules that follow from this:
- A licence bought by club A can be used by club B. If the person is allowed to play for B at all, an existing valid licence counts — nobody pays twice in the same period.
- A completed transfer beats everything else. Once a transfer for a sport is completed and the playable-from date has passed, that sport's playing rights are at the receiving club, whatever the licences say.
- A transfer does not renew a licence. It moves the right to play. Whether a licence is also bought is a separate choice made when the transfer is created.
- Playing rights are not time-limited. They do not lapse at the end of a season; they persist until a transfer or a correction moves them. Licences do lapse.
Buying and checking licences is covered on Player licences. Applying for and approving a move between clubs is covered on National transfers.
- Buying a licence, and the exact reason a licence was refused — the age brackets, "already licensed in another club", prerequisite and mutually exclusive licence types: see Player licences.
- Defining licence types, periods and their dates — see Licence types and periods. That page owns the game-ready and registration dates referred to here.
- Applying for a move between clubs, the objection window, approval and fees: see National transfers.
- Adding, editing and removing people on a roster, shirt numbers, roster limits and the player deadline: see The team roster.
- The over-age and guest-player workflow — the form, the organiser's queue, the decision e-mails: see Players registering themselves and being approved.
- Picking who plays a given match, starters, bench and captain: see Preparing a match in the electronic match protocol.
- What a class is and how its age and gender limits are defined: see Classes and competition format.
Suspensions and bans are handled by the federation; eligibility is checked on the roster and at sign-up, and, where the federation uses playing rights, also when the match squad is picked.
Other federations
Where the federation uses playing rights, each person has them per sport — one club for handball and one club for beach handball, and they can be different.
Children have no playing rights. A person counts as a child until 1 July of the year they turn 12. Until then the fields show ej aktuellt and no rights are computed — a child can be added by any club they are a member of, and a child licence never establishes rights for anybody.
Rights can be split. A person can hold handball rights at one club and beach handball rights at another, because transfers are per sport. Both clubs can then use them in their own sport, and both can license them. A third club cannot.
Where to see it. Club administrators see a Playing rights column per sport on the club's licence page.
Profixio works out the club by taking the first of these that gives an answer:
- An administrator's correction. A federation or district administrator has set the club by hand, with a reason.
- The most recent completed transfer for that sport, where the playable-from date is filled in. The receiving club holds the rights.
- A frozen assignment made when the person turned 12. On 1 July of the year a person turns 12, Profixio records the club they were registered with at that moment and freezes it. Later changes in the membership register do not move it.
- The person's first adult licence. The club that took out the person's first licence of a type that requires a transfer.
- Nothing. The person is a free agent: any club they are a member of may add them, and the first licence taken out will establish the rights.
Where to see it. District and federation administrators see the same per-sport column on the federation's player list, and can open a person to see a Playing Rights panel with the club per sport, alongside the person's licences, tournament registrations and club memberships.
Normally the people you can add are the people registered with your own club. Two mechanisms open that up.
Co-operation agreements between clubs. Where a federation uses them, an agreement is registered between a lending club and one specific team of a borrowing club. The borrowing team can then pick a club in the agreement and search the lending club's people. The rules are stricter than for your own players:
- only people whose playing rights sit at the lending club can be added — bare membership there is not enough,
- you cannot license somebody else's player: an unlicensed person is refused with Only licensed players from the partner club can be added. Ask the partner club to license the player first.,
- the exception that lets unlicensed members be used in a pre-licensing season does not widen the partner-club list: a person from the lending club still has to hold the rights there. Switching on the tournament setting License is not required for players does lift the requirement, however.
Agreements are created and maintained by district or federation staff, not by the clubs themselves.
Where the player is registered is shown on the roster. In federations that use this, a player borrowed from another club is labelled on the roster with a short prefix and the club name — Skriven i: in Swedish handball, Licens i in Swedish bandy.
Administrators can look outside the club. District, federation and tournament administrators generally get an option to pick a different club and search there. In Norwegian rugby that option is given to team leaders too. Being able to find a person this way does not switch off the licence and playing-rights checks — they still apply.
This section covers federations that run the full playing-rights model, and almost everything specific on this page applies to them.
- Rights are per sport, handball and beach handball tracked separately, and can sit at different clubs.
- The club must hold the rights to add a person to a roster. Bare membership is not enough for an adult. A person nobody holds rights to is free: the first club to add and license them takes the rights in both sports.
- A child is anybody up to 1 July of the year they turn 12. Children have no rights, are shown as ej aktuellt, and can be added by any club they are a member of.
- The match squad is gated. An adult without a valid licence on the tournament's start date cannot be put in the squad; the operator gets a Select license type window. If the person already holds a valid licence anywhere, it is picked up automatically and no new licence is created — nobody is charged twice. Unlike the roster, the squad window has no "no licence" option.
- A licence anywhere in the same club is enough for the line-up. Where other federations tie the licence to the specific team, Swedish handball accepts an active licence within the club.
- In Swedish handball, unlicensed players are shown and the missing-licence warning is off in list views. Absence of a warning does not mean everybody is licensed — use the Not licensed filter on the club licence page instead.
- The last season before the regime started is a transition season. Competitions dated in that season need only club membership; from the next season a licence is required.
The federation's own competition rules on top of this — how long after a transfer a player is game-ready, dispensations, youth rules between 12 and 15 — are handled by the federation, and only the resulting dates and decisions reach Profixio.
Swedish wrestling uses weight classes, where an entry is a single wrestler rather than a squad. Two things follow:
- A valid licence is required to enter a competition. Entering somebody without one is refused with No active license found and the name.
- The team list warns about the coming season. Where a wrestler is not game-ready for the competition's season, their entry carries the warning Valid license for … missing. Purchase license immediately, with the year filled in. The warning is shown only to people who administer that entry, not to the public, and it is a warning — it does not remove the entry.
Because an entry is one person, "the team is not eligible" and "the wrestler is not licensed" are the same statement here.
Several federations deliberately run without a licence gate on the roster. There, people can be found and added whether or not they hold a licence, and eligibility is a matter for the organiser rather than the system.
- Norwegian volleyball and Norwegian company sports — unlicensed people can be added and no missing-licence warning is shown. Both fetch people from the national member register rather than expecting them to exist in Profixio already. Norwegian company sports additionally switches off both the class age check and the gender check, so a class limit there is guidance, not a rule.
- Norwegian rugby — unlicensed people can be added, but the missing-licence warning is deliberately left on, and players buy their own licences, so the warning is the prompt that gets them to do it.
- International bandy and other international federations — unlicensed people can be added, coaches need no licence, and squads can be built for foreign clubs that are not in the federation's own club register.
In all of these, follow up the missing-licence warning, where it is shown, before the player is used in a match.
Other sports
Swedish beach volleyball checks eligibility earlier than anybody else — at sign-up, not at the roster.
- A valid licence is required to enter a tournament. A player without one is not offered in the entry form, and saving an entry for them is refused with No active license found and the player's name.
- One tournament per day or week per category. If the same person is already entered in another tournament in the same category inside the same day or week, the entry is refused with The person is registered in another tournament. Which categories this covers is set up by the federation.
- A player licensed at another club years ago can be refused a new licence without a transfer. The licence check looks at the newest licence ever recorded, not only the current period, when deciding whether somebody is licensed at another club.
Because the check happens at entry, a beach team that is entered is normally eligible — problems surface while the pair is being registered, not on the day.
For other roles
This is the table to read first. A warning and a block are very different things, and Profixio uses both.
| Where | What is checked | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Team roster — searching for somebody to add | Licence for this competition; class age and gender; where the federation uses playing rights, also those | People who do not qualify are not shown at all. An empty list shows No licenced persons available |
| Team roster — clicking a person who has no licence | Licence | Blocked, but with a way out: if you may register licences you get a Select license type window and the person is added once the licence is created. If you may not, you get Only the club can register a license for this player |
| Team roster — adding somebody from a partner club | Playing rights at the partner club | Blocked with Only licensed players from the partner club can be added. Ask the partner club to license the player first. You cannot license another club's player yourself |
| Team roster — the list of players already on the team | Licence | Warning only: a red Missing license line. In federations that show only licensed players, the person instead disappears from the list |
| Match protocol — putting a player in the squad | Licence valid on the tournament's start date, unless the player counts as a child | Blocked with a Select license type window. If the person already holds a valid licence anywhere, it is picked up automatically and they are added. Only where the federation uses playing rights |
| Match protocol — signing | Decided earlier | Already settled. Eligibility is checked when players are put on the roster and, where the federation uses playing rights, in the match squad |
| Tournament sign-up with a local player list | Licence for the class, where the federation requires one at sign-up | Players without a licence are not offered in the picker |
| Tournament sign-up — saving the entry | Licence; already entered in this class; entered in a competing tournament | Blocked with a message naming the problem |
| Buying licences | The full licence rule set | Blocked per person, with the reason written next to the name |
| Check-in at the tournament | Decided earlier | Already settled. Eligibility is checked on the roster and at sign-up |
Two consequences worth spelling out:
- Getting into the match squad is the last gate, and only where the federation uses playing rights. Everywhere else, a person on the roster can be picked for a match; check their eligibility before you pick them.
- A signed protocol is not proof of eligibility. If a player turns out to have been ineligible, that is a matter for the federation's own competition rules, handled outside Profixio.
Almost every complaint that begins "but the licence is valid" comes down to which date Profixio compares against.
It is the tournament's or series' start date — not today. The whole competition is anchored to one date, so that:
- a player does not become an adult in the middle of a season,
- a licence does not expire in the middle of a season,
- every match in the competition is treated the same way.
This has a consequence people find surprising: a licence that is valid today can still be refused for a series that started before it was bought, and a licence that has since expired can still be accepted for a competition that started while it was valid.
The season a federation switches on licensing. When a federation starts using playing rights from a given date, competitions that fall in the last season before that date keep the old rules: club membership is enough and no licence is required. From the first season after it, a licence is required. This is worked out automatically from the licence periods; nobody sets it per tournament.
Licence periods can be stretched for play. A licence period has an end date for buying licences, and a separate, usually later, date on the period called Players gameready for tournaments starting until this date. Eligibility uses the later of the two. A parallel setting, Can register for tournaments starting until this date, does the same for signing teams up. Both are set by the federation on the licence period, under Player Registration Configuration.
This is the single most effective lever a federation has — and the most dangerous. Setting the game-ready date too early cuts a season off; setting it far into the future quietly keeps an old period alive.
Defining periods and their dates is covered on Licence types and periods.
Beyond licences, three rules decide whether a person fits this competition.
The class's age limit. Where a class has a birth-year limit, only people born in or after that year are offered. The licence type may allow a year or two of slack, and that slack is added to the class limit. One federation — Norwegian company sports — switches the age check off entirely.
The class's gender. In a men's or women's class only people of that gender are offered, unless the licence type is marked as open to all genders. The gender check can also be switched off per federation.
Already entered, or entered somewhere else. When a team is signed up:
- a person who is already registered in the same category in the same tournament is refused, and the message names the other team and its contact addresses;
- where the federation has set this up for the category, a person entered in another tournament in the same category within the same day or week is refused with The person is registered in another tournament.
Over-age players and guest players. Where a tournament keeps its own player list, a team can register somebody who is over the class age, or a guest from another club, by ticking the corresponding box on the player form and uploading the required document. The registration is then held for the organiser to accept or reject; the player is not simply blocked. The full workflow — the form, the organiser's queue and the decision e-mails — is on Players registering themselves and being approved. What matters here: an over-age or guest registration is a request, and until it is decided the player is not cleared.
There are exactly four levers, and they sit at different levels.
1. Waive the licence requirement for one tournament. On the tournament's settings, under Tournament Data, the toggle License is not required for players — "Players without a valid license can be added to team rosters and match squads in this tournament." It is shown to federation-level users in that federation. It has wider effects than the label suggests: it opens the pool of people who can be added, removes the missing-licence warning, switches off the match-squad licence gate for that tournament, and also lifts the requirement that a player borrowed from a partner club be licensed already.
2. Correct a person's playing-rights club. District and federation administrators, in their own federation, can open a person from the player list or the club licence page and use Override in the Playing Rights panel. You choose the sport and the club and must give a reason. The correction takes effect immediately, is shown in an Override history panel with who made it and when, and is overtaken automatically if a transfer for that sport is later completed. Club administrators cannot do this.
3. Accept an over-age or guest registration. The organiser of the tournament decides these from the players list. See Players registering themselves and being approved.
4. Ask your federation about a federation-level rule. Everything else on this page — whether unlicensed players may be added at all, whether the age or gender check runs, whether coaches need a licence, whether co-operation agreements exist — is set per federation, not per tournament. Ask your federation or district administrator; they take a change up with Profixio.
If a player must be allowed to play against the normal rules, the correct route is a licence, a transfer, a playing-rights correction, or the federation handling it outside Profixio.
Work down in order. The first "no" is nearly always the answer.
- Are you looking at the right club? The search shows your own club's people. A person who moved club last summer is in the other club's list now.
- Does the person have a licence for the period covering this competition? Not "a licence" — a licence valid for the start date of this tournament or series. Check on the club's licence page.
- Does the class fit? Birth year before the class's limit, or the wrong gender for the class, and the person is never offered.
- Is somebody else holding the playing rights? Where your federation uses playing rights, if another club holds the rights for that sport, the person will not appear however well licensed they are. The fix is a transfer, or a correction if the recorded club is wrong.
- Is this a partner-club search? Then the person must both hold rights at the lending club and already be licensed. You cannot fix it from your side.
- Is the person entered elsewhere? Already in this category in this tournament, or in a competing tournament in the same week where that rule applies.
- Is it an over-age or guest registration waiting for a decision? Then it is with the organiser, not blocked.
- Do you have the right to register a licence? If not, you will be told the club has to do it — that is a permission, not an eligibility problem.
If the person is on the roster but marked Missing license, they were added under a rule that allowed it and the warning is telling you it will not hold: where the federation uses playing rights the match-squad gate will stop them, and everywhere else it is on the club to sort it out.
| Setting | What it does | Where it is set | Also means |
|---|---|---|---|
| License is not required for players | Unlicensed people can be added to rosters and match squads in this tournament | Tournament settings, Tournament Data. Federation level | Removes the missing-licence warning, switches off the match-squad gate, and lifts the partner-club licence requirement too |
| Players gameready for tournaments starting until this date | Extends a licence period's validity for play beyond the date licences can be bought | Licence period, Player Registration Configuration. Federation | Used for every eligibility check. Set too early it invalidates a whole season |
| Can register for tournaments starting until this date | Same, for signing teams up | Licence period, Player Registration Configuration. Federation | Separate from the game-ready date |
| The federation's playing-rights start date | From when the stricter regime applies | Set per federation. | Competitions in the last season before it need only club membership |
| Show players without a licence | Whether unlicensed people appear in pickers and rosters at all | Set per federation. | When off, an expired licence makes a player vanish from the roster list |
| Allow adding players without a licence | Whether an unlicensed person can be put on a roster | Set per federation. | Independent of the warning setting |
| Warn about a missing licence | The red Missing license marker | Set per federation. On by default | Only a warning; never blocks |
| Licence-period warnings on the team list | Valid license for … missing. Purchase license immediately on a team | Set per federation. | Only for team administrators, and only on the team list |
| Coaches without a licence | Whether leaders and coaches need one | Set per federation. | On in most licensing federations, so an unlicensed coach is normal there |
| Age check / gender check | Whether class age and gender filter the pickable people | Set per federation. | Both are switched off for Norwegian company sports |
| Co-operation agreements | Whether clubs can lend players to a named team | Set per federation. Agreements themselves: district or federation staff | Borrowed players must hold rights at the lending club and already be licensed |
| Playing-rights correction | Sets the club by hand, with a reason | Person view, Playing Rights → Override. District or federation, own federation only | Immediate; superseded by a later completed transfer |
Not settings, though they are often mistaken for them: licence prices and age brackets, which licence types require a transfer, which classes exist and their age limits, and how far back a federation looks for a previous licence. Those are the federation's own data and rules.
This is the most federation-specific area of Profixio, and the differences are built in rather than configured. Three broad groups:
- Federations with full playing rights. Rights per sport, a hard match-squad gate, transfers as the only normal way to move a player.
- Federations that require a licence but not playing rights. The roster only offers licensed people; nothing stops an already-added player being used in a match. Most licensing federations, including Swedish basketball, bandy, table tennis, rugby and water polo.
- Federations that do not gate on licences at all. Unlicensed people can be found and added; some also switch off the missing-licence warning. Norwegian volleyball, Norwegian company sports, Norwegian rugby, international bandy and several smaller federations.
And two rules that apply only where a federation uses them:
- a licence is required to sign a team up, not just to play — Swedish wrestling and Swedish beach volleyball;
- a player may not be entered in two tournaments in the same category in the same day or week — where the federation has set this up for its categories.
Federation policy, followed up by the federation itself: who is eligible after an injury or a suspension, national rules about how many borrowed players a team may field, dispensation rules for over-age players, and any "must have played N matches" requirement.
See also
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