Proactive strategies for soccer league timetabling

Due to unexpected events (e.g. bad weather conditions), soccer league schedules cannot always be played as announced before the start of the season. This paper aims to mitigate the impact of uncertainty on the quality of soccer league schedules. Breaks and cancellations are selected as two quality measures. Three proactive policies are proposed to deal with postponed matches. These policies determine where to insert so-called catch-up rounds as buffers in the schedule, to which postponed matches can be rescheduled