Anybody else playing it? After the 2 hours of railroaded main story, once you do the first set of sidequests, the day/night cycles start and you're free to wander everywhere and do the promotion matches at your leisure
Seems like the pattern is when a new main mission starts, it's some story, character stuff, story events, then when the game tells you "promotion match ready" that's when you do the Royale fights to fill up the bar to challenge the Promotion.