A COMBINED MATHEMATICAL MODELING AND ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS APPROACH FOR SPORTS SCHEDULING PROBLEMS

Malaysian football is witnessing a decrease in the number of supporters at their stadiums. Therefore, scheduling games in timeslots that maximize attendance at the stadiums is increasingly becoming a priority for the league administrators. We hypothesize that spectators would prefer to watch matches at stadiums if they are more important. That is, there is something to play for. Therefore, we propose to define a level of importance for each fixture. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a theory of relative measurement with absolute scales, is utilised to obtain these importance levels. We also develop an  integer programming model to assign fixtures to the timeslots in a way to maximize  the number of supporters that attend matches. The outcome of the first process is used as input to this optimization model. We apply the methodology to a real case d ata from the Super League Season in Malaysia and we believed that we have produced a superior schedule which will maximize gate receipts.