On the organisation of round robin tournaments with constraints

Abstract

A sporting league places every team into one of several divisions of equal size, and runs a round robin tournament for each division. Some teams are paired with another team, not necessarily in the same division, to share facilities. It is shown that however many teams are paired and whatever the pairings, it is always possible to schedule the fixtures in the minimum time, so that no two paired teams have home matches simultaneously. doi:10.1017/S1446181114000108