A Framework for Scheduling Professional Sports Leagues

Abstract

This paper introduces a framework for a highly constrained sports scheduling problem which is modeled from the requirements of various professional sports leagues. We define a sports scheduling problem, introduce the necessary terminology and detail the constraints of the problem. A set of artificial and real-world instances derived from the actual problems solved for the professional sports league owners are proposed. We publish the best solutions we have found, and invite the sports scheduling community to find solutions to the unsolved instances. We believe that the instances will help researchers to test the value of their solution methods. The instances are available online.

Scheduling a triple round robin tournament for the finnish national ice hockey league for players under 20

“…Earlier, we published a collection of highly constrained real-world sports scheduling problems in a joint work with twelve researchers [1]. In this work we stressed that in order to solve a real-world sports scheduling problem, a profound understanding of the relevant requests and requirements presented by the league is a prerequisite for developing an effective solution method.…”

“…The constraint numbers after each goal refer to the constraints presented in [1]. In addition to the five goals, the FIHA gives several requirements that the schedule has to fulfill.…”

“…Furthermore, TV networks buy the rights to broadcast the games and in return want the most attractive games to be scheduled at certain times. There are a growing number of cases where academic researchers have been able to close a contract with a professional sports league owner, as reported in [1]. Amateur sports leagues are also organized more professionally than before and it has been realized that good schedules are very important for a league's future success (see e.g.…”

Crucial Components of the PEAST Algorithm in Solving Real-World Scheduling Problems

“…We only know of a dozen cases where the researchers have been able to close a contract with a sports league owner, see e.g. [23].…”

“…Some important requirements a sports league uses for its feasible schedule include (see [23] for detailed α i = a dynamically adjusted weight for hard constraint i f i (x) = cost of violations of hard constraint i c i = a fixed weight for soft constraint i g i (x) = cost of violations of soft constraint i requirements):  Every team plays exactly once in every round (if a compact schedule is required).  A team cannot play at home on a certain day (e.g.…”