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Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America

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Abstract

Recent years have witnessed vigorous development in the application of mathematical and computational techniques to many aspects of the organization and planning of sports competitions. Known as sports scheduling, this field is one of the subjects of the present survey, which reviews different problems tackled in the associated literature, the techniques employed for solving them and the results of their implementation in real-world cases. Other topics in sports analytics such as player performance, result prediction, fantasy games and analysis of rankings are also examined. Special attention is given to applications in Latin America. The main challenges facing sports scheduling and other areas of sports analytics are also discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to both anonymous referees and one of the editors in chief for their comments and suggestions, which were of great help in improving the final version of this article. Thanks are also due to the Asociación Nacional de Fútbol Profesional de Chile (ANFP); the Superliga Argentina de Fútbol (SAF); the Liga Pro in Ecuador; the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL); the Asociación de Clubes de Básquetbol de la Argentina (AdC); and the Asociación de Clubes Liga Argentina de Voleibol (ACLAV) for their collaboration on various of the projects discussed in this survey. The author also wants to thank to Mario Guajardo, Gonzalo Zamorano, Javier Marenco, Pablo Rey, Facundo Gutiérrez, Iván Monardo, Alejandro Alvarez, Florencia Fernández, Flavia Bonomo, Kenneth Rivkin, Manuel Durán, Marcelo Mariosa and Claudia Zelzman for their helpful comments on this survey. Partial funding for the preparation of this article was provided by the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Chile, the Instituto Sistemas Complejos de Ingeniería (ISCI) in Santiago, Chile (CONICYT PIA/BASAL AFB180003), and Grants nos. UBACyT 20020170100495BA (UBA, Argentina) and ANPCyT PICT 2015-2218 (Mincyt, Argentina). Finally, the author owes a special debt of gratitude to Rafael Epstein and Andrés Weintraub, who taught him the supreme art of applying operations research to real-world problems.

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  1. Instituto de Cálculo y Departamento de Matemática, FCEN-UBA and CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Guillermo Durán

  2. Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, FCFM-Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Guillermo Durán

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Durán, G. Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America. TOP 29, 125–155 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11750-020-00576-9

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