Integrated Scheduling of Sports Events: A Macroscopic Perspective

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

2 Department of Physiology, Faculty of Center of Physical Education, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

The scheduling of sports events has a high degree of complexity due to the large number, diversity, and the interdependence of events as well as the existence of conflicting objectives. The present study investigates the integrated scheduling of multiple types of sports events simultaneously. A variety of sports events, including competitions, management meetings, training camps, and training workshops, are scheduled simultaneously regarding the appropriateness of the timeslot for each event and the suitability of the length of the time interval between each pair of events. Previous studies were limited to detailed scheduling of single types of events. For instance, they determine when and where each team plays with other teams. However, the current paper takes a macroscopic view and sets the timeslots in which the competitions and other types of events will be held. The part of output which sets the competition timeslots can be further given as input to one of the existing algorithms which determine the detailed schedule of competitions. An integer programming formulation is developed. Numerical examples demonstrate that the general-purpose solvers cannot obtain the optimal solution of real-sized problems within an acceptable time. To solve larger problems, the fix-and-optimize matheuristic approach is employed. Numerical results show the satisfactory performance of this approach. To validate the proposed method, the sport events of the Karate Federation of Iran for a whole year are scheduled as a real case study. Finally, using the data of this case study, a sensitivity analysis is performed for some of the parameters.

Keywords

References

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International Journal of Supply and Operations Management
Volume 10, Issue 2
May 2023
Pages 174-186

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