Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
play-off
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a play-off gameBritish English (= played to decide the winner after a previous game ended with both teams having equal points)
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ First two go up; next 4 fight it out in the play-offs.
▪ Gould was sacked after a stormy 14 months following Albion's failure to at least make the Third Division promotion play-offs.
▪ The 24-year-old central defender will have his right leg immobilised for six weeks and will miss the play-offs should Boro qualify.
▪ The best they can hope for is the No.2 spot or the play-offs.
▪ The drama both leading to and during the play-off was intense.
▪ We had to win to get into the play-offs and they needed to win to stay in the League.
Wiktionary
play-off
n. (alternative spelling of playoff English)
Usage examples of "play-off".
League frontiers, sociologists estimated that the play-off for the Galactic Pennant would occur in about 500 years.
The play-offs were all about street cred, and science didn't have any.
And it was the play-offs in Minsk where I sprained my knee and was sent to the showers early.
The week before the play-offs, he kept saying he'd like to find someone brave enough and stupid enough to bet on the Seventy-Sixers, because he had four hundred dollars just waiting to catch him a dividend.