Original title: The Traveling Tournament Problem: An Overview
David Van Bulck, Fan Yang, Dries Goossens, Michael Trick · September 2026
Planning sports schedules is tough when teams travel directly between away games without returning home first. This puzzle is called the Traveling Tournament Problem. It comes from real challenges in Major League Baseball, where finding ways to cut down total travel distance is the main computational hurdle. To address this, the authors provide an overview of 25 years of research. They examine how different algorithms, theoretical limits, and problem variants work to minimize that travel. The authors also track and validate best-known limits on travel distances. In addition, they take over an existing data repository from the RobinX sports timetabling project. Finally, they highlight unsolved questions to guide future work on tournament schedules.
When planning a multi-city tour, a band must choose the order of venues to minimize driving distance while following rules like alternating between headlining and opening acts. If they pick the wrong sequence, they end up with extra travel. In this paper, the Traveling Tournament Problem is similar: sports teams schedule away games in a fixed order to minimize travel, but with constraints on opponents and home/away status.
This matters because leagues like Major League Baseball need schedules that minimize team travel, which can reduce costs and player fatigue. Efficient scheduling affects how games are organized and experienced by everyone involved.
This work is an overview paper that summarizes existing research without introducing new algorithms or solutions. It does not advance the theoretical bounds or provide new benchmark results. The focus is on consolidating the literature and identifying open questions.
Ask anything about this paper. Answers come from its abstract, and say so when the abstract doesn't cover your question.
The Traveling Tournament Problem: An Overview — David Van Bulck, Fan Yang, Dries Goossens et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.