TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM
Home advantage
This multi-use nature of the stadium is another vital
component of the economic model. To enable it to host
both soccer and NFL American football, games are
played on the world’s first dividing, retractable playing
surface that incorporates dual fields. Mounted in three
enormous trays, the grass surface is retracted beneath
the stadium’s south stand to reveal an artificial NFL
American football field. The hard-wearing artificial
surface also allows the stadium to host other events,
such as concerts, without damaging the grass. The
Sheffield-based engineering firm SCX delivered the
retractable pitch, but the field was produced by US
company Turf Nation, which manufactured the last
four NFL Super Bowl synthetic surfaces.
Mark Nicholls, CEO of Turf Alliance, the company
that managed the turf installation, says the Tottenham
Stadium is “the most convertible stadium in the world”.
The surface has 132 RAPs (removable active panels),
which provides a lot of flexibility to adapt it for
multiple purposes, he says. “It’s a highly complex
system with nine rails running down the middle of the
field, allowing the trays to slide away. When switching
from NFL to soccer, we can take the logos and end
zones out and replace the white six-foot border with
green turf. In the end it becomes like a massive quilt.
About 50% of the turf can be pulled up to make
different applications work,” he says.
The economics of modern stadia, Nicholls believes,
makes it vital that they are convertible. Construction
costs have skyrocketed whilst the number of seats has
fallen, he says. An extreme example is the US$4.9bn
Los Angeles Stadium scheduled to open next year and
be home to the NFL’s LA Rams and LA Chargers. The
cost to build a single seat will work out at US$68,000,
he says, a sum that is impossible to recoup during 10
home games in the NFL a year. “When seats cost so
much money, they need to have events all the time to
make it viable financially. The main technical challenge
for Tottenham was to convert the stadium in 12 hours,
making it possible to use it the next day for a different
sport, or a concert, or a corporate event. The old
mindset was that the field was something you played
on, but convertibility is what drives decisions now and
Tottenham Hotspur is leading the way,” he says. n
(Above) The retractable turf
surface is one of the standout
features of the Tottenham
Hotspur Stadium, which
enables it to host multiple events
30 www.stadia-magazine.com September 2019
/www.stadia-magazine.com