An Application of the Traveling Tournament Problem: The Argentine Volleyball League

Flavia Bonomo (), Andrés Cardemil (), Guillermo Durán (), Javier Marenco and Daniela Sabán ()
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Flavia Bonomo: Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, 1033 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Andrés Cardemil: Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Guillermo Durán: Instituto de Cálculo and Departamento de Matemática, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, 1033 Buenos Aires, Argentina; Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matemáticas, Universidad de Chile, 8370439 Santiago, Chile
Daniela Sabán: Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Interfaces, 2012, vol. 42, issue 3, 245-259

Abstract: This article describes an optimization process used to schedule the First Division of Argentina's professional volleyball league. The teams in the league are grouped into couples, and matches are held on Thursdays and Saturdays. In each pair of consecutive Thursday–Saturday matches, the two teams in each couple play against two teams from another couple. Minimization of travel distances is critical because the teams' home locations are scattered throughout the country and teams do not return to their home sites between consecutive away matches, making this problem a variation of the well-known traveling tournament problem. The coupled format gives rise to two key decisions: (1) how to couple the teams, and (2) how to schedule the matches. We apply integer programming techniques and a tabu search heuristic to solve these questions. The league successfully used the resulting schedules in its 2007–2008, 2008–2009, 2009–2010, and 2010–2011 seasons, reducing the total travel distance while meeting all of the teams' requirements. This is the first application of the traveling tournament problem to a real-world sports league reported in the optimization literature.

Keywords: sports scheduling; integer programming; traveling tournament problem; team couples; volleyball (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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