SPORTING (SPORT schedulING)

Sports leagues and tournaments are scheduled around the world by thousands of sport federations, associations, clubs and organizers, both professional and non-professional. The underlying problem is a complex mathematical problem, hence most end-users resort to manual scheduling or, at best, to the use of software tools of scarce or unproven quality. Existing systems have many limits. Among these: single type of tournament structure, poor schedules, long computation time and rigidness to user specific constraints. In this project we develop what is currently missing out there: the go-to product for end-users across disciplines, which offers fast, high quality solutions and a flexible, enjoyable user-experience, handling different types of tournaments and sizes and allowing full user customization by adding, changing and removing requirements, specifications and objectives. A tool to produce optimized schedules for sport leagues has been developed and is continuously being improved. The first versions show promising results and is already put to use, additional functionalities are continuously being added. The software developed has been used to schedule professional leagues, the first and second league in Norway in collaboration with the Norwegian Football Association (NFF). It is also used by the Swedish Bandy and Volleyball associations. This provides added value in the sense that both TV-rights owners, fans and clubs can be given extra consideration when scheduling the league. Using this software, the key stakeholders can for the first time themselves evaluate additional changes to the tournaments. In addition, the software has allowed us to enter and develop new market areas strengthening our position as a 'go to provider' of software for sports scheduling. Behind all this lies an optimization engine that is used both for the professional and non-professional leagues. We are continuously improving this engine by adding features and improving performance.

In the project (SPORTING) we aimed to develop what is currently missing within sports scheduling, a simple product that works across sports disciplines, delivering high quality, handling different types of tournaments and supports user customization by adding, changing and removing requirements, specifications and objectives. Through vigorous work and scientific research, we have to a large extent achieved this goal. Based on results from SPORTING, Profixio offers an improved sports scheduling service for professional leagues (Sporting PRO) and for non-professional leagues and tournaments (Profixio TXO), NFF (The Norwegian Football Federation) has a tool (Sporting PRO) to schedule complex top-level leagues that has been used to plan the Norwegian football leagues, something that adds significant value for NFF, clubs, fans and TV companies.. Furthermore, Profixio is expanding their presence in other sports markets due to their increased competitiveness.

Sports leagues and tournaments are scheduled around the world by thousands of sport federations, associations, clubs and organizers, both professional and non-professional. Although the underlying problem is a hard mathematical problem, most end-users resort to manual scheduling or, at best, to the use of software tools of scarce or unproven quality. Existing systems have many limits. Among these: single type of tournament structure, poor schedules, long computation time and rigidness to user specific constraints. There is a very large untapped market, particularly the international one. Few countries have a history of using mathematical optimization techniques for sports scheduling, but Norway is somewhat an exception. SINTEF's optimization group developed Cupcom in 2005, an optimization engine for scheduling a specific type of (common) tournament, which has scheduled around 150 000 matches of handball, football and volleyball in Norway and Sweden this year. SINTEF has also been helping NFF (Norges fotballforbunds) with scheduling their top professional leagues for several years. CupCom gave us at Profixio the innovation needed to position ourselves as the main sports scheduling software company in Scandinavia. Still, CupCom schedules only a particular type of tournament and has several weak spots. To grow domestically, internationally, and to enter new untapped market segments, we need research based innovation. Our vision is to address the current gap in the market and become a leading global company in sports scheduling within 10 years. We aim to develop what is currently missing out there: the go-to product for end-users across disciplines, which offers fast, high quality solutions and a flexible, enjoyable user-experience, handling different types of tournaments and sizes and allowing full user customization by adding, changing and removing requirements, specifications and objectives.