Dazhuo Chen: Geographic Design of Sports Leagues to Optimize Driving Time and Competitiveness

Club sports in metro areas are popular nowadays, however there are key concerns for organizers, which are reducing driving time due to teams commuting to facilities in different regions while keeping league divisions competitive. A three-step approach is adopted to solve this problem. Driving time data between each location is analyzed initially, and clubs are split into several groups accordingly. Teams are assigned to groups based on their location and ranking. And these two processes are merged in the end to find the best solution. From the result, this optimization model is able to arrange games in a way that not only shortens the travel time for players, but also maintains an acceptable level of competition.