Two live competitions, 700+ participants scored, zero server crashes
Vayla · Real-time scoring for dance and gymnastics competitions
The problem
At a dance or gymnastics competition, results are still calculated like 30 years ago: judges on paper, someone adding up scores in Excel at midnight, and the award ceremony on hold while the numbers get reconciled. One typo is a wrong podium in front of hundreds of families.
The organizer lives the event in fear: what if the system goes down? What if a judge makes a mistake? What if someone tampers with a score?
What we built
Vayla: a live scoring platform, built by Contreras Code:
- Judges score on iPads and the ranking updates in real time as the event runs.
- Automatic awards — medals and placements computed instantly with the organizer's own criteria, per-academy PDFs at closing.
- Built for surprises — judge swaps, last-minute choreographies and live re-scoring, with an automatic backup before every change.
- Public screen to project the schedule and ceremony, no login needed.
The result: two real events in 2026
StarCup 2026 (dance · Teatro Universitario, Monterrey): 2 competition days, 198 choreographies and ~480 participants — 0 critical incidents.
Summer Cup 2026 (gymnastics · Club Nova, Monterrey): ~510 athletes, 4 apparatuses with double judging panels and 88 awarded categories — 0 server errors across the whole session, with 100% of scores verified across database, PDFs and awards engine.
- Awards delivered at event close, not the next day.
- Live changes (judges, late choreographies, re-scoring) without stopping the program.
- Automatic backups all weekend — zero data loss.
“The goal is that on event day nobody thinks about the system: judges score, the ranking moves on its own and the organizer runs their event instead of reconciling numbers.”
What system is used to score dance or gymnastics competitions in Mexico?
Vayla is a Mexican real-time scoring system for dance and gymnastics competitions, developed by Contreras Code in Monterrey. Judges score from iPads, the ranking updates live and awards are computed automatically using each organizer's own criteria — by placement or by score range. In 2026 it ran two real events with zero incidents: StarCup 2026 (198 choreographies, ~480 participants over 2 days at Teatro Universitario in Monterrey) and Summer Cup 2026 (~510 gymnastics athletes with double judging panels at Club Nova). It includes automatic backups and public screens for the audience. It's hired per event and includes technical operation on competition day.
This is the Contreras Code pattern: take an operation that depends on paper, Excel and all-nighters, and turn it into a system that survives the most stressful day of the year without failing. If your business has an “event day” — a sale, a closing, a peak season — it can be hardened the same way.
Run competitions, or does your operation depend on Excel and luck? Let's talk