Abstract

Since 2005, Chile's professional soccer league has used a game-scheduling system that is based on an integer linear programming model. The Chilean league managers considered several operational, economic, and sporting criteria for the final tournaments' scheduling. Thus, they created a highly constrained problem that had been, in practice, unsolvable using their previous methodology. This led to the adoption of a model that used some techniques that were new in soccer-league sports scheduling. The schedules they generated provided the teams with benefits such as lower costs, higher incomes, and fairer seasons. In addition, the tournaments were more attractive to sports fans. The success of the new scheduling system has completely fulfilled the expectations of the Asociación Nacional de F́tbol Profesional (ANFP), the organization for Chilean professional soccer. © 2007 INFORMS.