Q100 Michigan Odawa Casino Tournament of Rock 7.0 – Best Rock & Roll Song Edition: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Tournament of Rock 7.0 is and who runs it

The Q100 Michigan Odawa Casino Tournament of Rock 7.0 – Best Rock & Roll Song Edition is a listener contest conducted by Blarney Stone Broadcasting, the northern Michigan broadcast group behind WQON 100.3 FM and the Q100 Michigan brand. The station's masthead carries the tagline "Saving Rock & Roll One Listener at a Time," and the tournament is that mission turned into a ballot: instead of asking listeners to rank restaurants or plumbers, it asks them to carry a single rock and roll song through a knockout bracket.

Blarney Stone Broadcasting runs the ballot on q100michigan.com itself, with no third-party voting platform sitting between the listener and the vote. The rules live on the Tournament of Rock contest rules page, and that page is where the station publishes the Promotion's governing text. The broadcast group operates several stations alongside WQON, including 101.1 WGRY under an LMA with Mitten News LLC, plus 106.3 WWMN and 94.5 WYPV, so the tournament's reach spans the group's whole northern Michigan footprint.

Structurally this is a best-of vertical entry, but a narrow one. Where a regional best-of ballot spreads listeners across dozens of categories, the 7.0 edition funnels everything into a single question, the best rock and roll song, and builds a tournament around it. The Odawa Casino name in the title signals the sponsor tie-in that gives the edition its full branding.

The 2026 dates and what the rules page does and does not publish

The Tournament of Rock has confirmed editions in 2025 and 2026, an annual rhythm on the Q100 Michigan calendar. Printed dates exist for the 2026 cycle, because the contest rules page governs it directly.

The cycle opened with an entry period that began at 12:01am Eastern Time on 3/9/26 and ended at 11:59 PM ET on 4/2/26. Thirty-two total qualifiers were then selected in a random drawing following the entry period on Friday, April 3, 2026, and once identified, each listener stayed with their rock and roll song through the end of the contest. Online voting then took place 4/9/26 at 8:30AM through 5/22/26 at 8:29AM, and the station repeated the close in its rules as the end date for voting.

On the rules side, the page states that voting is unlimited and open to all listeners. What it does not print is the round-by-round schedule that carries the 32 qualifiers from the opening bracket to a final; those stage dates sit outside the quoted rules text, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two further gaps are worth naming plainly. The rules excerpt does not print a prize description for the 2026 edition, and it does not carry a category roster beyond the single Best Rock & Roll Song Edition theme that names this edition. Both would appear on the station's own pages if the station chooses to publish them.

How a supporter votes in the Tournament of Rock

The supporter's job in this program is simpler than in most Michigan ballots, because the rules remove the usual constraint. Voting is unlimited and open to all listeners, so a fan of a qualifier does not face a once-per-day ceiling and does not need to ration a daily return. The mechanic is: open the Tournament of Rock pages on q100michigan.com during the online voting window, find your qualifier's rock and roll song, and vote as often as you are willing to come back.

The path into the ballot runs through the contest rules page, which is the station's anchor document for the Promotion. It defines the entry period, carries the qualifier drawing on Friday, April 3, 2026, and holds the voting window of 4/9/26 at 8:30AM through 5/22/26 at 8:29AM. A listener who arrives mid-bracket can read the whole frame of the contest there before voting.

Entry works differently from voting. The entry period ran 3/9/26 to 4/2/26, before the bracket existed, and the 32 qualifiers were chosen by random drawing rather than by a nomination vote. That means a supporter who missed the entry window cannot put a new song into the 2026 bracket; the route to influence is voting for the qualifiers already in it.

Because the bracket pairs each qualifier with one song for the entire contest, every round is a fresh head-to-head for the same song, and the unlimited rule means momentum compounds: a qualifier whose fans vote daily is structurally harder to beat than one whose fans vote once.

How this ballot differs from its Michigan neighbours

Michigan's public-vote landscape is dominated by broad best-of ballots, and the Tournament of Rock sits apart from all of them. The Best of Northern Michigan program asks readers to pick favorites across a wide roster of local categories. The metro titles work the same way at larger scale: the Detroit Community Choice Awards, the Detroit News Readers' Choice and the DN Readers Choice Awards all spread a publication's audience across many business categories at once.

The closest neighbours in subject matter are the music ballots. The Detroit Music Awards is an awards program with a music vertical, and Grand Rapids Magazine Best of GR covers a west-side market. Neither is a knockout bracket built by a radio group around a single song title.

Three differences define the Tournament of Rock. First, the organizer is a broadcaster, not a publication or a chamber, so promotion runs through on-air mentions on WQON 100.3 FM and its sister stations as much as through the website. Second, the ballot is single-category by design: the 7.0 edition is the Best Rock & Roll Song Edition, so there is no category list to work through. Third, the format is a tournament of 32 qualifiers drawn at random, not an open nomination field, which means the competitive set is fixed early and the whole contest is decided by listener voting under an unlimited rule.

Strengthening support for a qualifier in this bracket

Because Blarney Stone Broadcasting's rules make voting unlimited and open to all listeners, support in the Tournament of Rock is a turnout game rather than a timing game. A qualifier's supporters do not need to save their votes for a final push near the close; the useful habit is a steady rhythm of return visits across the whole window, which ran 4/9/26 at 8:30AM to 5/22/26 at 8:29AM in 2026.

Sharing does the heavy lifting. The voting pages sit at q100michigan.com, so a qualifier's fans can pass that contest link through group chats, band pages and local music groups across northern Michigan, and each new listener who arrives can vote immediately and repeatedly. The station's own on-air promotion of the bracket is a reminder cycle a supporter can ride rather than fight.

On outside help, the printed rules for this Promotion govern conduct, and the page does not print a separate policy on purchased votes. Anyone weighing that route should read the organizer's rules first and the general background in our votes guide. What the format itself rewards is volume and consistency, and both are available to any listener for free under the unlimited rule.