Scheduling the Belgian Soccer League

Abstract

Any sports league needs a schedule of play, and such a schedule can be important, as it may influence the outcome of the sports competition itself and since it may have an impact on the interests of all parties involved. As in many other sports leagues and countries, the interest for Belgian soccer has increased over the last years. This paper describes our experiences in scheduling the highest Belgian soccer league. We describe how we automated and improved the way in which the calendar is constructed, resulting in the schedule for the season 2006-2007. We also explain how decomposing the scheduling problem into two subproblems resulted in a further improvement. The resulting calendar has been accepted for the season 2007-2008. Finally, we compare the quality of the schedules resulting from the different methods.

Keywords: Integer programming, Scheduling, Soccer, Sports, IT, Competition, Impact, Country, Experience, Quality, Methods