Beta invitations

Back onthe court.

BuzzerBeater is in beta, and registration asks for an invitation code. Get yours here and we’ll take you straight to registration with it filled in.

The New BuzzerBeater: Open Beta

I was 14 when I signed up for BuzzerBeater, in January 2009, during season 7. My first team was Romanoro Thunders, and I still remember coming home from school to watch the games.
Years later, in season 35, my team NativeStudios won league V.73 undefeated: 22–0. 🏆
Today I have the chance to take care of the game that taught me what being a manager means. I’m doing this for that kid, and for every one of you who was that kid too. ❤️

Marco, CEO @ Spicy Sparks

We want to personally thank every one of you for your patience in the years since the Spicy Sparks acquisition. 🙏

We know how it looked from the outside: a site that hardly changed, and news that came in drips. It’s only natural that some of you thought BuzzerBeater had been bought to be left on a shelf. That is not what happened.

We’re not strangers who bought a game. We’re managers who got the chance to save the one we grew up with, and it has not been forgotten: we have been working on it very, very hard.

While we built the new game, we left the current one in the trusted hands of members of the previous management, who knew every quirk of its code and could keep it running for you. We want to thank them with all our hearts: all these years, they kept the lights on for every one of us. 👏

We hear you 👂

We know you didn’t like the latest updates to the current game, and they will be reverted in the beta.

We also know the game needs a new salary formula. It will be our priority as soon as we reach a stable version.

Our approach will be data-driven and community-driven at the same time: the numbers will show us where the game is out of balance, and you will tell us how it feels to play it. 📊🤝

BuzzerBeater, reborn 🌅

This isn’t just an update. This is the rebirth of BuzzerBeater: the game that kept us checking our results for years, rebuilt from the ground up so it can live for many more seasons.

On 21 September we opened the doors to 121 veterans of the original game. They played it, pushed it and told us everything, and every manager who has tried it has appreciated the direction it’s going.

The beta testers realised that the first opinion they had formed of BB’s new owners, rightly or wrongly, wasn’t true: the BB team are hard workers who really care about the game, have no intention of abandoning it, and have the right ideas and ambition not only to make it more modern, but to make it better, while listening to the game’s longest-standing, most experienced members.

Edo, closed beta tester (translated from Italian)

Today we open it to everyone. The court is ready and the lights are on. All it’s missing is you. 🎉

Our goal for the game is to make it accessible to everyone: new users, veterans, and whoever is in between. Our goal towards the community is to be as open, responsive and reactive as possible. Our closed beta players have told us they noticed, and we are very proud of that. 💪

And we aim high. We want thousands upon thousands of managers online, so that the world feels alive: full leagues, a busy market, and someone to talk to on every match day. An immersive experience, a real 2.0. 🚀

The soul stays ❤️

We know what this game means to you. Many of you have managed the same club for well over a decade, and you don’t want someone else’s idea of basketball management. So for more than two years we did the slow, careful work of carrying BuzzerBeater over as it is.

📜 We went through the original game’s source code, rule by rule. Its routines for training, the economy, transfers, the draft, cups, playoffs and national teams were translated from the original engine and became the blueprint for the new one.
🔍 When the code and the screens disagreed, we followed what you could actually do in the game, because those are the rules you played by.
🤝 When even the code wasn’t clear, we asked the people who wrote it: the original developers.
🧪 121 veterans played it through the closed beta and told us wherever it didn’t feel right.
🏝️ The details you love are still there: Utopia for your second team, and the Classic layout and player portraits in Settings if you prefer the old look.

If something doesn’t feel like BuzzerBeater, it’s a bug, and we want to hear about it.

How does the beta work? 🤔

It’s simple!

🌍 The beta is a completely separate universe: you register again, create a new team and play as a new manager.
⭐ Everyone is a Supporter during the beta, so you can create two teams!
⏱️ Seasons are faster: in the beta, season 1 lasts 2 weeks, and from season 2, which starts on 6 October, each season lasts 4 weeks instead of the usual 14.
🛡️ Your team in the current game is not affected and keeps playing as usual while the beta runs. This game isn’t going anywhere until the new one has earned its place.
🔄 When it has, your club comes with you: its name, its players, its trophies, every season you played, moved over during an offseason with a short pause. The teams created in the beta will then be deleted, along with all their progress.

How to join 🎟️

📧 Check your email! We are sending 11,000 emails to the players of the current game, each with an invitation code.

You can also get an invitation code on this page, and once you are registered, the game gives you 2 invitation codes for your friends too, even if they have never played BuzzerBeater! 🤝

It’s a beta, so expect bugs and things that are still changing, and tell us about them on our Discord and through our email bb-beta@spicysparks.com.

This is only the beginning. The future ahead of us is extraordinary, and we can’t wait to build it with you. ✨

For the kids we were, and the managers we still are. See you on the court. 🏀

Marco, Alessandro, Jack, Chris, Mattia @ Spicy Sparks

A veteran in a white jersey passes a basketball to a young adult in black and orange as Coach Buzz watches in a gym transitioning from worn wooden bleachers to a renewed arena. — From one era to the next.

The story

Twenty years, rebuilt.

More than two years of quiet work to bring back the game we grew up with. Here is what we built, and how.

Why we started from scratch

BuzzerBeater was born in 2006, before the iPhone existed. For a website, twenty years is a geological era, and the game carried every one of them.

Under the hood, BuzzerBeater was a mosaic that had grown season after season: more than 2,000 procedures in the database holding the rules of the game, more than 30 separate programs passing the baton to each other at set times for training, the economy, transfers, the draft, cups and national teams, and the website itself on top of it all.

It worked for twenty years, and that is a huge credit to the people who built it. But every change risked breaking something else, and adding anything new had become almost impossible. We had two roads: keep patching, or rebuild. We chose to rebuild, knowing it meant years of work before we could show you anything.

The match engine

The heart of BuzzerBeater is the engine that simulates the games, and there we had one rule: invent nothing. We didn’t rewrite it our way. We translated it faithfully from the original code, small quirks included, because you have built years of tactics on that engine.

To make sure we never change it by accident, we keep a set of reference games. Every time someone touches the engine, the computer replays them all and checks that they end exactly as before, play by play. If a single shot goes differently, we know right away.

What changes for you

The rules are the ones you know. Everything around them is new.

A site you can read at a glance

We redesigned the screens one by one, starting with the ones you open every day. The roster shows every player’s age, salary, potential and skills at a glance.

The roster on the old site — A team’s roster, before and today.

The roster in the new BuzzerBeater — A team’s roster, before and today.

Games, rebuilt from the ground up

The match viewer was rewritten from scratch. Players move on the court following every action of the engine, with the score, the stats and the play-by-play always at hand, and you can scroll back and forth through the game to see the moments that matter again.

The match viewer on the old site — The match viewer, before and today.

The new match viewer, mid replay — The match viewer, before and today.

Tactics on one screen

Setting your lineup and your tactics is still the heart of every match day. The new tactic editor puts them on one screen, with your players where they will play.

The tactics page on the old site — The tactics of a game, before and today.

The tactic editor in the new BuzzerBeater — The tactics of a game, before and today.

Training you can follow

Training works the way it always has. The new screen shows the drill you picked, what it improves, which positions train it and how fast each one grows, next to the court.

The training page on the old site — The training page, before and today.

The training screen in the new BuzzerBeater — The training page, before and today.

Your league standings

Standings, schedule, playoff bracket and league stats sit together, in one place for every competition.

A league’s standings on the old site — A league’s standings, before and today.

A league’s standings in the new BuzzerBeater — A league’s standings, before and today.

On your phone too

Until now, on your phone you had the BuzzerBeater Mobile app. The new site fits any screen, so it works in your phone’s browser from day one, without zooming, and the new iOS and Android apps are coming soon.

The roster in the current BuzzerBeater Mobile app, and in the new site on a phone.

The roster in the new BuzzerBeater, in a phone’s browser — The roster in the current BuzzerBeater Mobile app, and in the new site on a phone.

Three interface levels

BuzzerBeater is full of numbers, and not everyone wants all of them on day one. So the new site comes in three interface levels. You choose yours when you start, and you can change it any time in Settings.

Rookie
Only the essentials, with fewer numbers while you learn the game. For managers who are new to BuzzerBeater.
Veteran
The standard view, with the key figures on every player.
All-Star
Every figure up front, skills included on compact player cards.

If you’ve been playing BuzzerBeater for years and want to see everything, pick All-Star: nothing is hidden, and every number the game has is on screen.

Prefer the old look?

If you miss the site you grew up with, the Classic layout and the classic player portraits are one click away in Settings.

The roster in the new BuzzerBeater with the Classic layout — The same roster in the new look and in the Classic layout.

And more…

End-of-season recaps and headlines that tell the story of your games, and a community inside the game: chat, friends and private leagues. The rest you’ll discover as you play.

The work you don’t see

Almost all the work of these years doesn’t show on any screen. Here it is in a few numbers.

The scoreboard2024–2026

29: months of workWe laid the first brick of the new BuzzerBeater in April 2024.
2,000+: procedures in the old gameThe rules of the game were spread across more than 2,000 database procedures. We went through them so that none would be lost.
30+: programs that became oneThe old game ran on more than 30 separate programs. Today it is a single system working as a whole.
11,000+: pages of codeThe code written for the new game would fill more than 11,000 printed pages.
34: languagesThe new BuzzerBeater speaks every manager’s language, in 34 languages.

The result is a game built to last another twenty years and, above all, easy to improve. We saw it in the closed beta: 121 veterans told us everything that wasn’t right, and within a few days we shipped 22 updates and fixed 234 bugs.

Questions about the beta

I already play BuzzerBeater. Do I need to register again?

Yes. The beta is a completely separate universe: you register again, create a new team and play as a new manager.

What happens to my team in the current game?

Nothing. It is not affected and keeps playing as usual while the beta runs.

When will my club arrive in the new game?

When the beta is over and we are confident the new game is ready to replace the current one. Then we will move all the data of the current game over, during an offseason: the game will pause only for as long as the move takes.

What happens to my beta team when the beta ends?

It is deleted, along with all its progress.

Has the match engine changed?

No. It was translated faithfully from the original, and every change is checked against a set of reference games that must end exactly as before. Your tactics work the way you know them.

Can I go back to the old look?

Yes. In Settings you’ll find the Classic layout and the classic player portraits.

I’m a veteran. How do I see every number?

Choose the All-Star interface level. You can switch between Rookie, Veteran and All-Star any time in Settings.

Is there a phone app?

The current BuzzerBeater Mobile app works with the current game. New iOS and Android apps for the new BuzzerBeater are coming soon. Meanwhile, the new site works well in your phone’s browser.

I play the current game. Will I get a code by email?

We are sending 11,000 emails to the players of the current game, each with an invitation code. Check your inbox, and your spam folder too. You can also get a code on this page.

How long is a season?

Season 1 lasts two weeks. From season 2, which starts on 6 October, each season lasts four weeks, instead of the usual 14.

Can I have more than one team?

Yes, two. Everyone is a Supporter during the beta, and a Supporter can create two teams.

Where do I report bugs or send feedback?

You can use Discord, or send us an email to bb-beta@spicysparks.com.

Why do I need an invitation code?

BuzzerBeater is in beta, and registration asks for an invitation code while it is. Each code registers one manager and works once.

How many codes can I get?

One per person. This page remembers the code it gave you, and each network can only request a few codes a day.

How can my friends join?

Once you are registered, the game gives you 2 invitation codes to invite your friends too, even if they have never played BuzzerBeater.

I left registration before finishing. Is my code lost?

No. Open this page again in the same browser and it takes you back to registration with the same code. If you already registered with it, log in instead.

The codes ran out. What now?

New codes are added from time to time. Come back later and try again.

What is the browser check?

It stops bots from taking the codes meant for people. Most of the time it runs by itself; now and then it asks you to tick a box.

Do I need a Discord account?

No. This page gives you a code without signing in anywhere.

What is BuzzerBeater?

An online basketball management game. You manage a club: its players, training, tactics and finances. You prepare your team before games, and the simulation plays them out.

Discover the game