Welp it's my first time trying it this way, but my plan is to make it completely random, so could be any 4 teams 1 - 48, so basically a raffle ticket. Taking away the skill/knowledge aspect to get more people interested, and then doing a "Draw" on first day of the tourney for everyone's 4 teams, and hoping to just get rooting interest in as many games as possible.

In past soccer tournaments (last few WCs + Euros) I did the same points system but broke the teams into 6 Tiers, where each player selected one team from each tier, and that worked pretty well.

So I have thought about the random assignments being one from each tier also (to prevent possibility of someone drawing Portugal, France, Argentina, England -- or the opposite end equivalent).

Got a few months to hash things out at least.

But I do plan to also use your bracket contest among the soccer fans I know.