Scheduling in sports: An annotated bibliography

Sports have worldwide appeal. Professional sport leagues involve significant investments in players. Events such as the Olympics Games, the Football World Cup and the major golf and tennis tournaments generate huge worldwide television audiences and many sports are multi-million dollar industries. A key aspect of sporting events is the ability to generate schedules that optimize logistic issues and that are seen as fair to all those who have an interest. This is not just restricted to generating the fixtures, but also to other areas such as assigning officials to the games in the competitions. This paper provides an annotated bibliography for sports scheduling articles. This area can be traced back over 40 years. It is noticeable that the number of papers has risen in recent years, demonstrating that scientific interest is increasing in this area.