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Scheduling English football fixtures over holiday periods

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  • G Kendall

    (The University of Nottingham)

Abstract

Every year the English football authorities produce a set of fixtures for the four main divisions in England. Over the Christmas and New Year period every team has to play two fixtures; one being played at their home venue and the other at an opponent's venue. There are various other constraints that also have to be respected with the overall objective being to minimize the total distance travelled by all teams. In this paper, I formally define the problem, discuss the data collection that I have undertaken and present the algorithm (which is based on depth first search, followed by a local search) I have developed. Using data from four seasons, I show that I am able to produce better schedules than those currently used.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:59:y:2008:i:6:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2602382
    DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602382
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Goller, Daniel & Krumer, Alex, 2019. "Let’s meet as usual: Do games on non-frequent days differ? Evidence from top European soccer leagues," Economics Working Paper Series 1907, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. A Ghoniem & H D Sherali, 2010. "Models and algorithms for the scheduling of a doubles tennis training tournament," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 61(5), pages 723-731, May.
    6. 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.
    7. Dries Goossens & Jeroen Beliën & Frits Spieksma, 2012. "Comparing league formats with respect to match importance in Belgian football," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 223-240, April.
    8. D Briskorn, 2011. "A branching scheme for minimum cost tournaments with regard to real-world constraints," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 62(12), pages 2133-2145, December.
    9. Kendall, Graham & Lenten, Liam J.A., 2017. "When sports rules go awry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(2), pages 377-394.
    10. Kent J. Kostuk & Keith A. Willoughby, 2012. "A Decision Support System for Scheduling the Canadian Football League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 286-295, June.
    11. 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.
    12. Briskorn, Dirk, 2009. "A branching scheme for minimum cost tournaments with regard to real world constraints," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 643, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    13. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Rodrigo Wolf-Yadlin, 2012. "Operations Research Techniques for Scheduling Chile's Second Division Soccer League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 273-285, June.
    14. 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.

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    Keywords

    scheduling; sports; optimization;
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