12 Time Zones
AFC
Scheduling and Referee Assignment at Continental Scale
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Football · Finland
Ligalytics × Veikkausliiga
From Spreadsheets to AI-Powered Scheduling
The Veikkausliiga is the first tier in Finnish football with 12 teams. The regular season is played from April until August.
Challenge
In the past the Veikkausliiga created their match schedules manually based on spreadsheets and one-on-one feedback calls. This process took weeks and did not satisfy the needs of the stakeholders.
Solution
Ligalytics introduced the Ligalytics Scheduler, an intuitive web-based tool to create the perfect match schedule.
The Veikkausliiga is the first tier in Finnish football with 12 teams. The regular season is played from April until August.
The Situation
In the past the Veikkausliiga created their match schedules manually based on spreadsheets and one-on-one feedback calls. This process took weeks and did not satisfy the needs of the stakeholders: the teams, the fans, sponsors, broadcasters and the league itself.
Key objectives were to honour clubs' home/away preferences to grow attendance, place premium fixtures into strong broadcast windows, avoid clashes with other events to protect stadium utilisation, and free up planning time for other work.
The Solution
Ligalytics introduced the Ligalytics Scheduler, an intuitive web-based tool to create the perfect match schedule. After an explanation and supported by the Ligalytics team the Veikkausliiga was able to create their own schedules.
Now they were able to define the various wishes and restrictions of the stakeholders as prerequisites and to develop different scenarios on the basis of these. Instead of usually weeks they created their initial league schedule for 2020 within days.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Veikkausliiga had to postpone the start of the 2020 season and to reschedule it. The Ligalytics Scheduler enabled them to do this quickly and easily after the decision to kick-off the season again mid 2020.
“We usually create the schedule in December just before Christmas which is a very busy time for all participants. With the help of Ligalytics we could have reduced the time creating the schedule from weeks to days being able to focus on other important tasks. Especially with COVID-19 we had to reschedule the whole season early in 2020. With the help of Ligalytics this was just a matter of a few hours to produce a new schedule instead of weeks.”
Pyry Waltari
Communications Manager, Veikkausliiga
League leadership echoed the same theme:
“With the Ligalytics scheduler we could take into account more wishes and restrictions from the clubs more easily.”
Timo Warjamaa
Managing Director, Veikkausliiga
The Benefits
Save Time: The schedule was created within days instead of weeks.
Focus on Stakeholder Needs: Constraints and wishes of all stakeholders could be considered.
React to Unforeseen Situations: The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could easily be taken into account and a new schedule could be planned quickly and with minimal effort.
Key Outcomes
100% Automated
Schedule created within days instead of weeks
All stakeholder constraints and wishes considered
COVID-19 rescheduling completed in hours
More time freed for other important tasks
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