Format
The competition is a knockout tournament with pairings drawn completely at random – there are no seeds, and a draw takes place after the majority of fixtures have been played in each round. However, the qualifying round draws and the 1st Round proper draw are regionalised to reduce teams' travel costs. The draw also determines which team will play at home. If a match (other than the semi-final or final) is drawn, there is a replay, usually at the ground of the team which played away from home for the first game. Drawn replays are now settled with extra time and penalty shootouts, though in the past further replays were possible. The longest FA Trophy Tie happened in the 1980-81 FA Trophy Second Qualifying Round when Netherfield beat Bridlington Trinity in the 6th Replay. In 1997-98 multiple replays were replaced by extra time and penalty kicks in the replay.
Originally the competition included as many qualifying rounds as were required to reduce the number of teams to 32. In 1999 the format was amended to match that of the FA Cup, with six rounds prior to the semi-final stage, albeit without qualifying rounds. Teams from the Football Conference received byes through the early rounds, in a similar manner to the way in which the leading clubs receive byes in the FA Cup. More recently the competition has been revised again and now features four qualifying rounds and four rounds proper before the semi-finals. Teams from Step 4 enter at the preliminary round stage, those from Step 3 at the first qualifying round, those from Step 2 at the third qualifying round, and those from Step 1 at the first round proper.
The FA pays prize money to all teams which win at least one match in the Trophy competition. In the 2008–09 season the prize for the 51 preliminary round winners was £2,000, rising round-by-round to £50,000 for the winners of the final. The prize fund is cumulative, so a team that starts in the preliminary round and wins through several rounds would receive £2,000 for the preliminary round, £2,300 for the first qualifying round, £3,000 for the second qualifying round, and so on. The competition is sponsored by Carlsberg and accordingly billed as the FA Carlsberg Trophy. Previously it was sponsored by Umbro and billed as the FA Umbro Trophy.
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