Breakthrough optimization results advance fairness and transparency in global competition scheduling
ST. LOUIS, MO, UNITED STATES, February 10, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — SimpleRose announced today that its optimization research group has achieved breakthrough results in the global RobinX sports scheduling benchmark library, a widely used international research benchmark, solving over forty international test problems that had remained unsolved until now.
The work focuses on round-robin sports scheduling, with the goal of reducing extended home or away stretches, often referred to as “homestands” and “road trips” respectively, or collectively as “breaks” in scheduling research. Reducing these stretches improves player recovery, competitive balance, and match quality as well as club revenue from ticket sales. Reducing the number of home and away stretches also improves competitive flow and broadcast value.
These benchmark instances are among the most challenging ever published and demonstrate the real-world value of applying advanced mathematical optimization methods to complex, highly constrained scheduling problems.
This announcement comes amid heightened global scrutiny around scheduling fairness, transparency, and competitive integrity in professional soccer (football). Ongoing criticism throughout 2025 over fixture congestion, unequal rest periods, and opaque scheduling decisions has led player unions, leagues, and national associations to call for clearer, more explainable approaches to scheduling.
The solved RobinX instances reflect real-world league formats and rules, incorporating the same scheduling constraints that determine whether a competition schedule is feasible and fair in practice.
“These benchmark problems have challenged researchers for years,” said Dr. Nasser Salmasi, Principal Research Scientist at SimpleRose. “What we show here is that you don’t need to relax the constraints and expectations to get a fairer schedule. You can respect all the real constraints and still reduce imbalance, which is important for integrity, especially in international competitions.”
The RobinX library is used worldwide by academics, leagues, and governing bodies to evaluate sports scheduling methods. By extending the set of known feasible solutions, SimpleRose’s research group has expanded what is computationally possible in modern sports timetabling.
Additional background on the RobinX benchmarks is available in a short explainer on SimpleRose’s website. The full technical paper will be forthcoming.
SimpleRose Communications
SimpleRose
info@simplerose.com
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