Artificial Outdoor Sports Surfaces
The popularity of synthetic sports surfaces in the 1970s all across the USA and Canada prompted many sports facilities around the world to opt for them. Artificial sports surfaces could be used for football and hockey pitches, tennis courts or for synthetic athletics tracks. They have also found prominence in Multi Use Games Areas (MUGAs) where a variety of games can be played on the same surface.
Manufactured from synthetic materials, polypropylene and sometimes, polyethylene, an artificial sports surface offers the same playing characteristics as natural grass surfaces. However, there are many advantages that they enjoy over natural grass. First, an artificial sports surface is usable all year round. This means whatever be the weather, you can always enjoy the scheduled football or hockey match. Wet or frozen winters cannot stop you from enjoying your favourite game.
Another advantage of opting for artificial sports surfaces is their low maintenance costs. In fact, it is one of the main reasons for the artificial sports pitches being favoured by sports clubs and other sports facilities providers. By installing a synthetic sports surface, they can do away with many activities like regular watering, draining, mowing, applying fertilizers, weeding, and so on of grass pitches. This could considerably bring down their annual outlay on maintenance, which can be used for other productive activities.
An artificial sports surface, be it a synthetic football pitch or an athletics track, can be so designed as to minimise the risk of injury to players when they slide or fall on the surface. This is possible because such an artificial turf is usually equipped with a “shock absorbent layer” just beneath the top layer. Also, water-based or unfilled artificial sports surfaces, a variant of synthetic sports pitches and used for playing hockey, protect players by minimising the abrasive effect caused by sand in-fill. Similarly, the artificial athletics surfaces are specially built to offer the benefit of slip-resistance to the players.
Artificial sports surfaces are also available in a choice of colours. This allows court markings to be made in different colours for different sports on the same surface. This is particularly true in the case of MUGAs. Synthetic athletics tracks also allow the use of multi-coloured striping and event markings. This allows the same track to be used for multiple events besides enhancing the look of the tracks.