A two-phase methodology based on MADM and zero-one programming for planning exhibition soccer matches

It is essential to choose proper teams for exhibition games by management of sports teams. The Iran soccer team as well as its opponents in the World Cup tournament needs some exhibition games. This study suggests a two-phase model for planning the exhibition football games to choose between 15 teams for exhibition games considering the cost of travels and the minimum values required for different parameters. The first phase uses multi attribute decision-making (MADM) technique in which each team is assigned scores based on the pre-defined parameters. Weights obtained in the first phase are used as input to the second phase. In the second phase, a mathematical optimisation model is proposed which is able to choose teams, organise the events and minimise the travel path from the origin to each destination and eventually to the origin (Iran). It is noteworthy that the second phase uses travelling salesman problem (TSP).