Baseball with its artificial turf field. Artificial turf was first used in
Major League Baseball (MLB) in the Houston Astrodome in 1966, replacing the grass field used when the stadium opened a year earlier. Even though the grass was specifically bred for indoor use, the dome's semi-transparent
Lucite ceiling panels, which had been painted white to cut down on glare that bothered the players, did not pass enough sunlight to support the grass. For most of the
1965 season, the
Astros played on green-painted dirt and dead grass. The solution was to install a new type of artificial grass on the field,
ChemGrass, which became known as
AstroTurf. Given its early use, the term
astroturf has since been used as a generic term for any artificial turf. Because the supply of AstroTurf was still low, only a limited amount was available for the first home game. There was not enough for the entire outfield, but there was enough to cover the traditional grass portion of the infield. The outfield remained painted dirt until after the All-Star Break. The team was sent on an extended road trip before the break, and on July 19, 1966, the installation of the outfield portion of AstroTurf was completed. The
Chicago White Sox became the first team to install artificial turf in an outdoor stadium, as they used it only in the infield and adjacent foul territory at
Comiskey Park from 1969 through 1975. Artificial turf was later installed in other new
multi-purpose stadiums such as Pittsburgh's
Three Rivers Stadium, Philadelphia's
Veterans Stadium, and Cincinnati's
Riverfront Stadium. Early AstroTurf baseball fields used the traditional all-dirt path, but starting in 1970 with Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, teams began using the "base cutout" layout on the diamond, with the only dirt being on the pitcher's mound, batter's circle, and in a five-sided diamond-shaped "sliding box" around each base. With this layout, a painted arc would indicate where the edge of the outfield grass would normally be, to assist fielders in positioning themselves properly. The last stadium in MLB to use this configuration was
Rogers Centre in Toronto, when they switched to an all-dirt infield (but kept the artificial turf) for the 2016 season. The biggest difference in play on artificial turf was that the ball bounced higher than on real grass and also traveled faster, causing infielders to play farther back than they would normally so that they would have sufficient time to react. The ball also had a truer bounce than on grass so that on long throws fielders could deliberately bounce the ball in front of the player they were throwing to, with the certainty that it would travel in a straight line and not be deflected to the right or left. The biggest impact on the game of "turf", as it came to be called, was on the bodies of the players. The artificial surface, which was generally placed over a concrete base, had much less give to it than a traditional dirt and grass field did, which caused more wear-and-tear on knees, ankles, feet, and the lower back, possibly even shortening the careers of those players who played a significant portion of their games on artificial surfaces. Players also complained that the turf was much hotter than grass, sometimes causing the metal spikes to burn their feet or plastic ones to melt. These factors eventually provoked a number of stadiums, such as the
Kansas City Royals'
Kauffman Stadium, to switch from artificial turf back to natural grass. In 2000, St. Petersburg's
Tropicana Field became the first MLB field to use a third-generation artificial surface,
FieldTurf. All other remaining artificial turf stadiums were either converted to third-generation surfaces or were replaced entirely by new natural grass stadiums. In a span of 13 years, between 1992 and 2005, the
National League went from having half of its teams using artificial turf to all of them playing on natural grass. With the replacement of the
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis by
Target Field in 2010, only two MLB stadiums used artificial turf from 2010 through 2018: Tropicana Field and Toronto's Rogers Centre. This number grew to three when the Arizona Diamondbacks switched
Chase Field to artificial turf for the 2019 season; the stadium had grass from its opening in 1998 until 2018, but the difficulty of maintaining the grass in the stadium, which has a retractable roof and is located in a desert city, was cited as the reason for the switch. In 2020, Miami's
Marlins Park also switched to artificial turf for similar reasons, while the Texas Rangers' new
Globe Life Field was opened with an artificial surface, as it is also a retractable roof ballpark in a hot weather city; this puts the number of teams using synthetic turf in MLB at five as of 2025. The Rays temporarily moved to the outdoor grass-surfaced
George M. Steinbrenner Field in 2025, due to damage suffered to Tropicana Field from
Hurricane Milton, leaving four turf stadiums, two in each league. The Rays will return to Tropicana Field for 2026.
American football The first professional American football team to play on artificial turf was the
Houston Oilers, then part of the
American Football League, who moved into the
Astrodome in 1968, which had installed AstroTurf two years prior. In 1969, the
University of Pennsylvania's
Franklin Field in Philadelphia, at the time also home field of the
Philadelphia Eagles, switched from grass to AstroTurf, making it the first
National Football League stadium to use artificial turf. In 2002,
CenturyLink Field, originally planned to have a natural grass field, was instead surfaced with FieldTurf upon positive reaction from the
Seattle Seahawks when they played on the surface at their temporary home of
Husky Stadium during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. This would be the first of a leaguewide trend taking place over the next several seasons that would not only result in teams already using artificial surfaces for their fields switching to the new FieldTurf or other similar surfaces but would also see several teams playing on grass adopt a new surface. (The
Indianapolis Colts'
RCA Dome and the
St. Louis Rams'
Edward Jones Dome were the last two stadiums in the NFL to replace their first-generation AstroTurf surfaces for next-generation ones after the
2004 season). For example, after a three-year experiment with a natural surface,
Giants Stadium went to FieldTurf for 2003, while
M&T Bank Stadium added its own artificial surface the same year (it has since been removed and replaced with a natural surface, which the stadium had before installing the turf). Later examples include
Paul Brown Stadium, which went from grass to turf in 2004;
Gillette Stadium, which made the switch in 2006; and
NRG Stadium, which did so in 2015. As of 2021, 14 NFL fields out of 30 are artificial. NFL players overwhelmingly prefer natural grass over synthetic surfaces, according to a league survey conducted in 2010. When asked, "Which surface do you think is more likely to shorten your career?", 90% responded artificial turf. When players were asked "Is the Turf versus Grass debate overblown or a real concern" in an anonymous player survey, 83% believe it is a real concern while 12.3% believe it is overblown. Following receiver
Odell Beckham Jr.'s injury during
Super Bowl LVI, other NFL players started calling for turf to be banned since the site of the game,
SoFi Stadium, had a turf field and still does, although a grass pitch will be installed for
2026 FIFA World Cup matches at the stadium.
Arena football is played indoors on the older short-pile artificial turf.
Canadian football The first professional
Canadian football stadium to use artificial turf was
Empire Stadium in
Vancouver, British Columbia, then home of the
Canadian Football League's
BC Lions, which installed 3M TartanTurf in 1970. Today, eight of the nine stadiums in the CFL currently use artificial turf, largely because of the harsh weather conditions in the latter-half of the season. The only one that does not is
BMO Field in Toronto, which initially had an artificial pitch and has been shared by the CFL's
Toronto Argonauts since 2016 (part of the endzones at that stadium are covered with artificial turf). The first stadium to use the next-generation surface was Ottawa's
Frank Clair Stadium, which the
Ottawa Renegades used when they began play in
2002. The
Saskatchewan Roughriders'
Taylor Field was the only major professional sports venue in North America to use a second-generation artificial playing surface,
Omniturf, which was used from 1988 to 2000, followed by AstroTurf from 2000 to 2007 and FieldTurf from 2007 to its 2016 closure.
Cricket Some
cricket pitches are made of synthetic grass or of a hybrid of mostly natural and some artificial grass, with these "hybrid pitches" having been implemented across several parts of the
United Kingdom and
Australia. The first synthetic turf cricket field in the U.S. was opened in
Fremont, California in 2016.
Field hockey The introduction of synthetic surfaces has significantly changed the sport of
field hockey. Since being introduced in the 1970s, competitions in western countries are now mostly played on artificial surfaces. This has increased the speed of the game considerably and changed the shape of hockey sticks to allow for different techniques, such as reverse stick trapping and hitting. Field hockey artificial turf differs from artificial turf for other sports, in that it does not try to reproduce a grass feel, being made of shorter fibers. This allows the improvement in speed brought by earlier artificial turfs to be retained. This development is problematic for areas which cannot afford to build an extra artificial field for hockey alone. The
International Hockey Federation and manufacturers are driving research in order to produce new fields that will be suitable for a variety of sports. The use of artificial turf in conjunction with changes in the game's rules (e.g., the removal of offside, introduction of rolling substitutes and the self-pass, and to the interpretation of obstruction) have contributed significantly to change the nature of the game, greatly increasing the speed and intensity of play as well as placing far greater demands on the conditioning of the players.
Association football , Norway: home of the
football club
FK Bodø/Glimt The use of artificial turf, and whether they are allowed or not, varies between different tournaments and time periods. Though grass is preferred in general in association football, artificial turf is found in areas where it is seen as impractical to maintain natural grass season-long, with causes including very cold climates (for instance
Norway's
Eliteserien) or multi-purpose stadiums (
Seattle's
Lumen Field).
Use permitted •
UEFA Champions League (2005–) •
UEFA Europa League (2005–) •
UEFA Conference League •
FIFA national team matches (200?–) •
UEFA national team matches (2005–) •
FA Cup •
Swiss Super League •
Allsvenskan •
Danish Superliga •
Eliteserien •
Veikkausliiga •
Meistriliiga •
Cymru Premier •
CONMEBOL tournaments •
Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (2016–) •
Bolivian Primera División History in United Kingdom Some
association football clubs in Europe installed synthetic surfaces in the 1980s, which were called "plastic pitches" (often derisively) in countries such as England. There, four professional club venues had adopted them;
Queens Park Rangers' (QPR)
Loftus Road (1981–1988),
Luton Town's
Kenilworth Road (1985–1991),
Oldham Athletic's
Boundary Park (1986–1991) and
Preston North End's
Deepdale (1986–1994). QPR had been the first team to install an artificial pitch at their stadium in 1981, but were the first to remove it when they did so in 1988. Artificial pitches were banned from top-flight (then First Division) football in 1991, forcing Oldham Athletic to remove their artificial pitch after their promotion to the First Division in 1991, while then top-flight Luton Town also removed their artificial pitch at the same time. The last
Football League team to have an artificial pitch in England was Preston North End, who removed their pitch in 1994 after eight years in use. Artificial pitches were banned from the top four divisions from 1995. Artificial turf gained a bad reputation globally, with fans and especially with players. The first-generation artificial turf surfaces were carpet-like in their look and feel, and thus, a far harder surface than grass and soon became known as an unforgiving playing surface that was prone to cause more
injuries, and in particular, more serious joint injuries, than would comparatively be suffered on a grass surface. This turf was also regarded as aesthetically unappealing to many fans. In 1981, London football club
Queens Park Rangers dug up its grass pitch and installed an artificial one. Others followed, and by the mid-1980s there were four artificial surfaces in operation in the English league. They soon became a national joke: the ball pinged round like it was made of rubber, the players kept losing their footing, and anyone who fell over risked carpet burns. Unsurprisingly, fans complained that the football was awful to watch and, one by one, the clubs returned to natural grass. In November 2011, it was reported that a number of English football clubs were interested in using artificial pitches again on economic grounds. As of January 2020, artificial pitches are not permitted in the
Premier League or
Football League but are permitted in the
National League and lower divisions.
Bromley is an example of an English football club who currently uses a third-generation artificial pitch. In 2018, Sutton United were close to achieving promotion to the Football League and the debate in England about artificial pitches resurfaced again. It was reported that, if Sutton won promotion, they would subsequently be demoted two leagues if they refused to replace their pitch with natural grass. After
Harrogate Town's promotion to the Football League in 2020, the club was obliged to install a natural grass pitch at
Wetherby Road; and after winning promotion in 2021 Sutton was also obliged to tear up their artificial pitch and replace it with grass, at a cost of more than £500,000. Artificial pitches are permitted in all rounds of the
FA Cup competition.
History elsewhere In the 1990s, many North American soccer clubs also removed their artificial surfaces and re-installed grass, while others moved to new stadiums with state-of-the-art grass surfaces that were designed to withstand cold temperatures where the climate demanded it. The use of artificial turf was later banned by
FIFA,
UEFA, and many domestic football associations, but FIFA and UEFA allowed it again from the mid-2000's (UEFA from the 2005–06 season onwards), provided that the turfs are FIFA Recommended. UEFA has now been heavily involved in programs to test artificial turf, with tests made in several grounds meeting with FIFA approval. A team of UEFA, FIFA, and German company Polytan conducted tests in the Stadion Salzburg Wals-Siezenheim in Salzburg, Austria which had matches played on it in UEFA Euro 2008. It is the second FIFA 2 Star approved artificial turf in a European domestic top flight, after Dutch club
Heracles Almelo received the FIFA certificate in August 2005. The tests were approved. FIFA originally launched its FIFA Quality Concept in February 2001. A full international fixture for the
2008 European Championships was played on October 17, 2007, between
England and
Russia on an artificial surface, which was installed to counteract adverse weather conditions, at the
Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. It was one of the first full international games to be played on such a surface approved by FIFA and UEFA. The latter ordered the
2008 European Champions League final hosted in the same stadium in May 2008 to be played on grass, so a temporary natural grass field was installed just for the final. In 2007, UEFA stressed that artificial turf should only be considered an option where climatic conditions necessitate. One Desso "
hybrid grass" product incorporates both natural grass and artificial elements. In June 2009, following a match played at
Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in Costa Rica,
American national team manager
Bob Bradley called on FIFA to "have some courage" and ban artificial surfaces. FIFA designated a star system for artificial turf fields that have undergone a series of tests that examine quality and performance based on a two star system. Recommended one-star fields are mainly intended for recreational use, while Recommended two-star fields that closely follow the standards of professional foodball may be used for FIFA Final Round Competitions as well as for
UEFA Europa League and
Champions League matches. , there were 104 FIFA Recommended 2-Star installations in the world. In 2009, FIFA launched the Preferred Producer Initiative to improve the quality of artificial football turf at each stage of the life cycle (manufacturing, installation and maintenance). Currently, there are five manufacturers that were selected by FIFA: Act Global, Limonta, Desso, GreenFields, and Edel Grass. These firms have made quality guarantees directly to FIFA and have agreed to increased
research and development. In 2010,
Estadio Omnilife, with an artificial turf, opened in
Guadalajara to be the new home of
Chivas, one of the most popular teams in Mexico. The owner of Chivas,
Jorge Vergara, defended the reasoning behind using artificial turf because the stadium was designed to be "environment friendly and as such, having grass would result [in] using too much water." Some players criticized the field, saying its harder surface caused many injuries. When
Johan Cruyff became the adviser of the team, he recommended the switch to natural grass, which the team did in 2012. The
2015 FIFA Women's World Cup took place entirely on artificial surfaces, as the event was played in Canada, where almost all of the country's stadiums use artificial turf due to climate issues. This plan garnered criticism from players and fans, some believing the artificial surfaces make players more susceptible to injuries. Over fifty of the female athletes protested against the use of artificial turf on the basis of
gender discrimination.
Australia winger
Caitlin Foord said that after playing 90 minutes there was no difference to her post-match recovery – a view shared by the rest of the squad. The squad spent much time preparing on the surface and had no problems with its use in Winnipeg. "We've been training on [artificial] turf pretty much all year so I think we're kind of used to it in that way ... I think grass or turf you can still pull up sore after a game so it's definitely about getting the recovery in and getting it right", Foord said. A lawsuit was filed on October 1, 2014, in an Ontario tribunal court by a group of women's international soccer players against FIFA and the
Canadian Soccer Association, and specifically points out that in 1994 FIFA spent $2 million to plant natural grass over artificial turf in
New Jersey and
Detroit. Various celebrities showed their support for the women soccer players in defense of their lawsuit, including actor
Tom Hanks, NBA player
Kobe Bryant and
U.S. men's soccer team keeper
Tim Howard. Even with the possibility of boycotts,
FIFA's head of women's competitions, Tatjana Haenni, made it clear that "we play on artificial turf and there's no Plan B." The first stadium to use artificial turf in Brazil was
Atlético Paranaense's
Arena da Baixada in 2016. In 2020, the administration of
Allianz Parque, home of
Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras, started the implementation of the second artificial pitch in the country. In 2024, the
Eredivisie banned artificial turfs, meaning
hybrid grass and
natural grass became mandatory, starting from the 2025–26 season. In UEFA tournaments, teams who are used to playing on artificial turf are seen as having a large home advantage against teams who don't, as was the case for
Bodø/Glimt's semi-final campaign in the
2024–25 UEFA Europa League.
Rugby union Rugby union also uses artificial surfaces at a professional level. Infill fields are used by English
Premiership Rugby teams
Gloucester,
Newcastle Falcons,
Saracens F.C. and the now defunct
Worcester Warriors, as well as
United Rugby Championship teams
Cardiff,
Edinburgh and
Glasgow Warriors. Some fields, including
Twickenham Stadium, have incorporated a hybrid field, with grass and synthetic fibers used on the surface. This allows for the field to be much more hard wearing, making it less susceptible to weather conditions and frequent use.
Tennis Carpet has been used as a surface for indoor tennis courts for decades, though the first carpets used were more similar to home carpets than a synthetic grass. After the introduction of AstroTurf, it came to be used for tennis courts, both indoor and outdoor, though only a small minority of courts use the surface. Both infill and non-infill versions are used, and are typically considered medium-fast to fast surfaces under the
International Tennis Federation's classification scheme. Such hybrid surfaces are currently used for some association football stadiums, including
Wembley Stadium.
Golf Synthetic turf can also be used in the golf industry, such as on driving ranges, putting greens and even in some circumstances tee boxes. For low budget courses, particularly those catering to casual golfers, synthetic putting greens offer the advantage of being a relatively cheap alternative to installing and maintaining grass greens, but are much more similar to real grass in appearance and feel compared to sand greens which are the traditional alternative surface. Because of the vast areas of golf courses and the damage from clubs during shots, it is not feasible to surface fairways with artificial turf.
Pesäpallo . Though all
pesäpallo teams in the higher leagues (including
Superpesis) play on clay courts, several teams' stadiums use carpet-type artificial grass below the clay.
Motor racing Artificial grass is used to line the perimeter of some sections of some motor circuits, and offers less grip than some other surfaces. It can pose an obstacle to drivers if it gets caught on their car. ==Other applications==