IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v307y2023i1p313-327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multi-league sports scheduling with different leagues sizes

Author

Listed:
  • Li, Miao
  • Davari, Morteza
  • Goossens, Dries

Abstract

This paper introduces a general multi-league sports scheduling problem where timetables for multiple leagues must be determined simultaneously, a practical and challenging problem in amateur and youth sports. We consider round robin leagues with different numbers of teams, and hence also requiring different numbers of rounds. As the number of simultaneous home games that clubs can organize for their teams is limited by the capacity of their venue, the objective is to minimize capacity violations. Along with a mixed integer programming model which is formulated to optimize the starting round of each league as well as to settle when teams have their home games, we develop various methods to construct an initial solution, and a heuristic with several local search and perturbation components to improve on this. Extensive computational experiments reveal that our heuristic can efficiently provide high-quality solutions for artificial and realistic instances. We also illustrate the impact of using different sets of home-away patterns on the total venue capacity violations. Results on a real-life application from the Belgian national football association indicate that schedules based on our heuristic allow teams to substantially decrease their venue capacity without causing meaningfully more violations.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Miao & Davari, Morteza & Goossens, Dries, 2023. "Multi-league sports scheduling with different leagues sizes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(1), pages 313-327.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:307:y:2023:i:1:p:313-327
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2022.10.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221722007792
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2022.10.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rasmussen, Rasmus V., 2008. "Scheduling a triple round robin tournament for the best Danish soccer league," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 185(2), pages 795-810, March.
    2. F. Della Croce & R. Tadei & P.S. Asioli, 1999. "Scheduling a round robin tennis tournamentunder courts and players availability constraints," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 92(0), pages 349-361, January.
    3. Robert A. Russell & Janny M. Y. Leung, 1994. "Devising a Cost Effective Schedule for a Baseball League," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 42(4), pages 614-625, August.
    4. Yi, Xiajie & Goossens, Dries & Nobibon, Fabrice Talla, 2020. "Proactive and reactive strategies for football league timetabling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(2), pages 772-785.
    5. Carlsson, Mats & Johansson, Mikael & Larson, Jeffrey, 2017. "Scheduling double round-robin tournaments with divisional play using constraint programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 259(3), pages 1180-1190.
    6. Jari Kyngäs & Kimmo Nurmi & Nico Kyngäs & George Lilley & Thea Salter & Dries Goossens, 2017. "Scheduling the Australian Football League," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(8), pages 973-982, August.
    7. Diego Recalde & Daniel Severín & Ramiro Torres & Polo Vaca, 2018. "An exact approach for the balanced k-way partitioning problem with weight constraints and its application to sports team realignment," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 916-936, October.
    8. Dries Goossens & Frits Spieksma, 2009. "Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 39(2), pages 109-118, April.
    9. Urban, Timothy L. & Russell, Robert A., 2003. "Scheduling sports competitions on multiple venues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 302-311, July.
    10. G Kendall, 2008. "Scheduling English football fixtures over holiday periods," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(6), pages 743-755, June.
    11. Mark Grabau, 2012. "Softball Scheduling as Easy as 1-2-3 (Strikes You're Out)," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 310-319, June.
    12. John E. Mitchell, 2003. "Realignment in the National Football League: Did they do it right?," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(7), pages 683-701, October.
    13. Xiaoyun Ji & John E. Mitchell, 2005. "Finding optimal realignments in sports leagues using a branch-and-cut-and-price approach," International Journal of Operational Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 1(1/2), pages 101-122.
    14. Schonberger, J. & Mattfeld, D. C. & Kopfer, H., 2004. "Memetic Algorithm timetabling for non-commercial sport leagues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(1), pages 102-116, February.
    15. H. W. Kuhn, 1956. "Variants of the hungarian method for assignment problems," Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(4), pages 253-258, December.
    16. Marjorie Cone Saur & Kaleigh Starr & Mark Husted & Alexandra M. Newman, 2012. "Scheduling Softball Series in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 296-309, June.
    17. Van Bulck, David & Goossens, Dries & Schönberger, Jörn & Guajardo, Mario, 2020. "RobinX: A three-field classification and unified data format for round-robin sports timetabling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 280(2), pages 568-580.
    18. Durán, Guillermo & Durán, Santiago & Marenco, Javier & Mascialino, Federico & Rey, Pablo A., 2019. "Scheduling Argentina’s professional basketball leagues: A variation on the Travelling Tournament Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(3), pages 1126-1138.
    19. Saltzman, Robert M. & Bradford, Richard M., 1996. "Optimal realignments of the teams in the National Football League," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 469-475, September.
    20. Túlio A. M. Toffolo & Jan Christiaens & Frits C. R. Spieksma & Greet Vanden Berghe, 2019. "The sport teams grouping problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(1), pages 223-243, April.
    21. Hoshino, Richard & Kawarabayashi, Ken-ichi, 2011. "A multi-round generalization of the traveling tournament problem and its application to Japanese baseball," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 215(2), pages 481-497, December.
    22. Chelouah, Rachid & Siarry, Patrick, 2000. "Tabu Search applied to global optimization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 256-270, June.
    23. Larson Jeffrey & Johansson Mikael, 2014. "Constructing schedules for sports leagues with divisional and round-robin tournaments," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 119-129, June.
    24. David Bulck & Dries R. Goossens & Frits C. R. Spieksma, 2019. "Scheduling a non-professional indoor football league: a tabu search based approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 275(2), pages 715-730, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Tim Pawlowski & Shlomo Weber, 2024. "Domestic Competitive Balance and International Success: The Case of The Football Industry," Papers 2402.08396, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guillermo Durán, 2021. "Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 29(1), pages 125-155, April.
    2. David Van Bulck & Dries Goossens & Jo¨rn Scho¨nberger & Mario Guajardo, 2020. "An Instance Data Repository for the Round-robin Sports Timetabling Problem," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 45(2), pages 184-200, May.
    3. Mancini Simona & Isabello Andrea, 2014. "Fair referee assignment for the Italian soccer serieA," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 153-160, June.
    4. Goller, Daniel & Krumer, Alex, 2020. "Let's meet as usual: Do games played on non-frequent days differ? Evidence from top European soccer leagues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(2), pages 740-754.
    5. Elizabeth L. Bouzarth & Benjamin C. Grannan & John M. Harris & Kevin R. Hutson, 2022. "Scheduling the Valley Baseball League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 52(2), pages 189-197, March.
    6. M B Wright, 2009. "50 years of OR in sport," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 161-168, May.
    7. Xiajie Yi & Dries Goossens, 2023. "Strategies for dealing with uncertainty in time-relaxed sports timetabling," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 320(1), pages 473-492, January.
    8. Van Bulck, David & Goossens, Dries, 2023. "A traditional Benders’ approach to sports timetabling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 813-826.
    9. Dries Goossens & Jeroen Beliën, 2023. "Teaching Integer Programming by Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League," INFORMS Transactions on Education, INFORMS, vol. 23(3), pages 164-172, May.
    10. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Facundo Gutiérrez & Javier Marenco & Denis Sauré & Gonzalo Zamorano, 2021. "Scheduling the Main Professional Football League of Argentina," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 51(5), pages 361-372, September.
    11. Yi, Xiajie & Goossens, Dries & Nobibon, Fabrice Talla, 2020. "Proactive and reactive strategies for football league timetabling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(2), pages 772-785.
    12. Simona Mancini, 2018. "Assignment of swimmers to events in a multi-team meeting for team global performance optimization," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 264(1), pages 325-337, May.
    13. Durán, Guillermo & Guajardo, Mario & Sauré, Denis, 2017. "Scheduling the South American Qualifiers to the 2018 FIFA World Cup by integer programming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(3), pages 1109-1115.
    14. David Van Bulck & Dries Goossens, 2022. "Optimizing rest times and differences in games played: an iterative two-phase approach," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 261-271, June.
    15. Van Bulck, David & Goossens, Dries & Clarner, Jan-Patrick & Dimitsas, Angelos & Fonseca, George H.G. & Lamas-Fernandez, Carlos & Lester, Martin Mariusz & Pedersen, Jaap & Phillips, Antony E. & Rosati,, 2024. "Which algorithm to select in sports timetabling?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 318(2), pages 575-591.
    16. Durán, Guillermo & Durán, Santiago & Marenco, Javier & Mascialino, Federico & Rey, Pablo A., 2019. "Scheduling Argentina’s professional basketball leagues: A variation on the Travelling Tournament Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(3), pages 1126-1138.
    17. Diego Recalde & Ramiro Torres & Polo Vaca, 2020. "An exact approach for the multi-constraint graph partitioning problem," EURO Journal on Computational Optimization, Springer;EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies, vol. 8(3), pages 289-308, October.
    18. Bergantiños, Gustavo & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D., 2022. "Monotonicity in sharing the revenues from broadcasting sports leagues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 297(1), pages 338-346.
    19. Russell, Robert A. & Urban, Timothy L., 2010. "Multicriteria models for planning power-networking events," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(1), pages 83-91, November.
    20. Jakee, Keith & Kenneally, Martin & Dineen, Declan, 2022. "Scheduling slots and league objectives: An empirical analysis of Australia’s AFL," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 359-371.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:307:y:2023:i:1:p:313-327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.