  The study of problems concerning subdivisions of graphs has a rich history in
extremal combinatorics. Confirming a conjecture of Burr and Erd\H{o}s, Alon
proved in 1994 that subdivided graphs have linear Ramsey numbers. Later, Alon,
Krivelevich and Sudakov showed that every $n$-vertex graph with at least
$\varepsilon n^2$ edges contains a $1$-subdivision of the complete graph on
$c_{\varepsilon}\sqrt{n}$ vertices, resolving another old conjecture of
Erd\H{o}s. In this paper we consider the directed analogue of these problems
and show that every tournament on at least $(2+o(1))k^2$ vertices contains the
1-subdivision of a transitive tournament on $k$ vertices. This is optimal up to
a multiplicative factor of 4 and confirms a conjecture of Gir\~ao, Popielarz
and Snyder.
