Fixture-scheduling for the Australian Football League using a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm

AFL football is a team sport that entertains millions and contributes a huge amount of money to the Australian economy. Scheduling games in the AFL is difficult, as a number of different, often conflicting, factors must be considered. In this paper, we propose the use of a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for determining such a schedule. We detail the technical details needed to apply a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to this problem and report on experiments that show the effectiveness of this approach. Comparison with actual schedules used in the AFL demonstrates that this approach could make a useful contribution.