How To Use Better Scheduling To Trim Your League’s Costs

Sports leagues of all sizes need to create quality schedules. Many professional associations focus on fixtures in terms of TV revenue, matchups, sponsorships, and other factors. These are all important to consider. However, there is one area where some leagues could save costs, improve fan attendance, and reduce player fatigue: optimizing flights. If you're not optimizing travel times for your teams, you could be unnecessarily wasting money and having a bigger carbon footprint than you need to have. Both of these are not optimal for the league's wallet or its public perception.

A Hypothetical Scenario

Suppose we have a fictitious league where two teams play on the eastern part of the continent, and two teams play on the western half. Let's suppose the plane ride from east to west is 1.000 kilometers, but between each city in each half, it's only 100 kilometers. So to travel from West Team #1 to West Team #2 would be 100 kilometers, but to go from West Team #1 to East Team #3, would be 1.000 kilometers.

All teams play each other, but when they play each other significantly impacts travel time, fatigue, and cost. It can also impact fan revenue. If West Team #1 plays East Team #3, then has to fly back home to play then West Team #2, that's 2.200 kilometers of flying. Visiting East Team #4 would add another 2.000 kilometers which adds up to 4.200 kilometers in total.

However, if West Team #1 plays East Team #3 and then flies out to East Team #4, flying back home and making a last round trip to play against West Team #2 will just add up to a total of 2.300 kilometers, that's a saving of 1.900 kilometers.

Multiply that by 18 teams, and pretty quickly, you can save thousands of kilometers of expense, time, and carbon footprint.

For teams that charter planes and fans that travel on the road, this makes a massive impact in people's ability to get there and the costs teams must pay.

This Problem Happens Frequently In Sports Scheduling

While the above scenario is purely hypothetical, it happens quite a bit in real life. Imagine a European league with Berlin, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki. Berlin with playing sequence of:

Berlin -> Olso (Away) -> Stockholm (Away) -> Helsinki (Home) -> Berlin (~2.033 km)

will save 1.191 kilometers of travel as compared with:

Berlin -> Oslo (Away) -> Helsinki (Home) -> Stockholm (Away) -> Berlin (~3.224 km)

Even adjusting the schedules within one nation can result in less expense and less carbon footprint. When you consider sports events across countries, provinces, states, and continents, this issue becomes significantly more complicated.

By getting these schedules right, though, you save on costs and increase the likelihood that fans will follow your teams on their road trips. Your league can boost its revenue and cut costs - a real win-win!

Ligalytics Scheduler Is The Solution

Modern sports leagues that have many teams cannot possibly calculate all these different schedule costs and carbon footprint by hand. Having just six teams means that there are hundreds of different ways to create a schedule, each with varying prices and expected revenues associated with them.

Luckily, Ligalytics takes into account all these factors for you to create the optimal schedule. It will factor in the distance to create an optimal program that's cost-efficient, works within the confines of stadium and venue availability, and will please your fans!