New issues in attendance demand: the case of the English football league

This paper uses an attendance demand model with panel data on over 4,000 games to examine economic problems of fixture congestion in English Football League schedules. We find that televised midweek Champions League matches involving English Premier League clubs have substantial adverse impacts on lower division Football League gate attendance. This suggests that affected clubs may have a case for compensation from the Premier League for loss of gate revenue from this source. Scheduling of home games close to one another also has an adverse impact on attendance. Reorganisation of fixture schedules and/or redistribution of income would help offset adverse impacts on team revenues from midweek scheduling.

Soccer schedules in Europe: an overview

In this paper, we give an overview of the competition formats and the schedules used in 25 European soccer competitions for the season 2008-2009. We discuss how competitions decide the league champion, qualification for European tournaments, and relegation. Following Griggs and Rosa (Bull. ICA 18:65-68, 1996), we examine the popularity of the so-called canonical schedule. We investigate the presence of a number of properties related to successive home or successive away matches (breaks) and of symmetry between the various parts of the competition. We introduce the concept of ranking-balancedness, which is particularly useful to decide whether a fair ranking can be made. We also determine how the schedules manage the carry-over effect. We conclude by observing that there is quite some diversity in European soccer schedules, and that current schedules leave room for further optimizing

Outcome uncertainty and the couch potato audience

Previous studies of attendance demand for professional team sports have failed to yield clear- cut findings on the importance of outcome uncertainty to consumers. But potentially fewer problems should arise in examining the link between outcome uncertainty and demand in the television market for team sports, which in the case of English Premier League football is in fact a more important component in total club revenue. This study models both the choice of which games to show and the size of audience attracted by each game, exploiting data on audience sizes for games between 1993 and 2002. We propose a new measure of match outcome uncertainty and, from our results, both the broadcaster and the audience appear interested in competitive balance.

English Premier League scheduling using simulated annealing

This is the first known attempt at scheduling the English Premier League (EPL), which is a NP-hard problem, in the literature. In this research an initial schedule is created using a ‘polygon’ construction method, a method which originates in graph theory. Two distinct simulated annealing metaheuristic solving methodologies are then created to improve this initial schedule. One method is based on a temperature schedule, finite epoch length and reheats while the other is based on a gradually reducing temperature schedule and non-finite epoch length. These two methods were evaluated with respect to solution quality (total penalty), reliability (variation of solution quality over numerous trials) and speed. The official schedule used by the EPL organisers was used for comparison. It was found that the first method produced comparable results, while the second produced improved results. The second method was validated over three seasons and consistently performed well. The findings in this research can be used as the maiden real-world framework and benchmark for the unsolved EPL scheduling problem in the sports scheduling literature

Comparing league formats with respect to match importance in Belgian football

Recently, most clubs in the highest Belgian football division have become convinced that the format of their league should be changed. Moreover, the TV station that broadcasts the league is pleading for a more attractive competition. However, the clubs have not been able to agree on a new league format, mainly because they have conflicting interests. In this paper, we compare the current league format, and three other formats that have been considered by the Royal Belgian Football Association. We simulate the course of each of these league formats, based on historical match results. We assume that the attractiveness of a format is determined by the importance of its games; our importance measure for a game is based on the number of teams for which this game can be decisive to reach a given goal. Furthermore, we provide an overview of how each league format aligns with the expectations and interests of each type of club

Changing competition design and spectator turnout: evidence from the League of Ireland

We contribute to the literature on demand for football by investigating the effect of variations in competition design on spectator turnout. We examine attendance in the League of Ireland Premier Division for two periods with alternative league formats, estimating club-fixed effects regressions. Our results show that the change did not increase average attendance. Many determinants of attendance are robust to the reorganisation and balance measures are consistent under both formats. Like past evidence from the League, habit, team form, scheduling and travel are important determinants. Our results speak to league administrators and club owners attempting to optimise revenues

An instance data repository for the round-robin sports timetabling problem

The sports timetabling problem is a combinatorial optimization problem that consists of creating a timetable that defines against whom, when and where teams play games. This is a complex matter, since real-life sports timetabling applications are typically highly constrained. The vast amount and variety of constraints and the lack of generally accepted benchmark problem instances make that timetable algorithms proposed in the literature are often tested on just one or two specific seasons of the competition under consideration. This is problematic since only a few algorithmic insights are gained. To mitigate this issue, this article provides a problem instance repository containing over 40 different types of instances covering artificial and real-life problem instances. The construction of such a repository is not trivial, since there are dozens of constraints that need to be expressed in a standardized format. For this, our repository relies on RobinX, an XML-supported classification framework. The resulting repository provides a (non-exhaustive) overview of most real-life sports timetabling applications published over the last five decades. For every problem, a short description highlights the most distinguishing characteristics of the problem. The repository is publicly available and will be continuously updated as new instances or better solutions become available

The multi-league sports scheduling problem, or how to schedule thousands of matches

\u3cp\u3eWe consider the simultaneous scheduling of multiple sport leagues, with interdependencies arising from teams in different leagues belonging to the same club. Teams from the same club share the same venue with limited capacity. We minimize the total capacity violation in polynomial time when each league has the same, even number of teams. We introduce two generalizations: one where teams from a club have to play according to the same pattern, and one where club capacities differ throughout the season.\u3c/p\u3

Operations research techniques for scheduling chile's second division soccer league

In this paper, we use operations research (OR) techniques to schedule the Second Division of the Chilean professional soccer league. The solution must satisfy a series of conditions requested by league officials. Because the teams generally travel long distances by bus, geographical restrictions are particularly important. We specify the scheduling problem and solve it using an integer linear programming (ILP) model that defines when and where each match is played, subject to constraints. For the most difficult instances, we formulate a second ILP model that generates home-away patterns and assigns them to the teams; we then run the model, which determines the match schedule. Chilean league officials have successfully used the models to schedule all five Second Division tournaments between 2007 and 2010, replacing the random scheduling methodology that they used previously. Since 2007, the two formulations have been adapted to various formats with which the Second Division has experimented; these include a quadruple round robin and a two-phase tournament with zonal and national phases. The application we present is one of a number of such projects that the authors and their colleagues developed over the past few years, and it represents an expansion of the use of OR techniques for managing tasks in Chilean soccer.Fil: Duran, Guillermo Alfredo. Universidad de Chile; Chile. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló"; ArgentinaFil: Guajardo, Mario. NHH Norwegian School of Economics; NoruegaFil: Wolf Yadlin, Rodrigo. Universidad de Chile; Chil