Growing a top-quality pitch in the world’s largest indoor covered football stadium

The Kingdom Arena is the world’s first completely indoor football stadium. It holds two Guinness World Records: one for being the largest covered football stadium and another for having the highest capacity for an indoor covered stadium. Being the first and largest indoor football stadium presents several tough challenges.

One of the biggest challenges was the short timeline between the decision to transform the multi-functional Kingdom Arena into a football hall and hosting the first international tournament with world-class clubs at Riyadh Season. Riyadh Season is an annual entertainment festival that attracts millions with its diverse lineup of sports events, concerts, cultural exhibitions and attractions. The production and delivery had to be completed in just two months, despite shipping challenges in the Red Sea at the time.

From an agronomic point of view, this is potentially one of the most challenging projects imaginable. Growing grass indoors is possible, but it’s another thing to lift it up to top-quality. The absence of sunlight, rain, and wind means you must create all the natural elements artificially. Managing all these elements together and finding the right balance is a significant challenge.

One important factor in growing grass is wind circulation. Wind is necessary for grass to cool down and release heat into the air. Without wind, the grass can’t release its heat and the humidity levels around the grass will rise, creating favourable conditions for fungal diseases to thrive. Possibly causing significant turf damage and could even be leading to reduced photosynthetic capacity.

Another important factor that the Kingdom Arena must deal with is the variety of the event schedule. During non-football events, the grass is covered to create more space for spectators. While the grass is covered, it is deprived of air, light, and water, leading to potential damage. Depending on the covering time, turf can fade away and require longer to grow back to its full potential. Consequently, the grass needs time to recover from these damages.

Managing a pitch in a stadium with zero light poses unique agronomic challenges. Without any natural elements, a microclimate similar to a greenhouse needed to be created to ensure optimal conditions for grass growth. Fortunately, SGL has its roots in greenhouse rose cultivation. The Kingdom Arena implemented a full-pitch LED grow lighting system, sustainable grass disease control solutions (UV-C Technology), turf cooling fans, and a complete smart grass monitoring system to create the ideal microclimate.

The entire pitch in the Kingdom Arena is covered with 18 LED440 and 2 LED120 grow lighting units. This latest LED technology enables SELA’s agronomy team to manage light and heat separately, allowing them to adjust both elements to create the perfect conditions for top-quality growth. Controlling this microclimate involves managing various elements and paying attention to every detail, with data playing a crucial role in this process. The Kingdom Arena uses Turfpods to collect data from the pitch. The grounds team analyses this data via their personalised SGL Portal, enabling them to achieve the highest possible grass quality and use their resources efficiently.

Wind circulation is also essential for grass growth. The Kingdom Arena grounds team uses six TC50s to create the much-needed wind circulation. These Turf Coolers increase air circulation, prevent heat stress, and decrease the risk of turfgrass diseases. Additionally, the grounds team proactively treats the pitch with the UVC180. This UVC light effectively destroys the DNA of actively growing fungi, causing them to die before they can damage the turfgrass.

The event schedule of the Kingdom Arena includes not only football matches of Al Hilal SFC, the AFC Asian Cup, and Riyadh Season matches, but also other major events such as boxing, tennis, and MMA. As a multi-use venue, you aim to host as many events as possible while maintaining the pitch in good condition. Treating the pitch with LED lights helps the grass recover faster after non-grass events. A fast recovery of the pitch allows for hosting more events, thereby maximizing stadium revenue.

The goal of the Kingdom Arena is to maintain a top-quality, resilient, and healthy grass playing surface that is primed to host elite competitions and events consistently. They have set their target quality for the pitch at a high standard of 95%. A challenge eagerly taken on by our agronomists in collaboration with SELA’s agronomy team, who takes care of the Kingdom Arena.

Achieving a pitch quality of 95% in an indoor stadium requires a lot of necessary resources. Therefore, the Kingdom Arena implemented a full-pitch LED grow lighting system, sustainable grass disease control solutions, turf cooling fans, and a complete smart grass monitoring system to create the ideal microclimate.

The Kingdom Arena has proven in their first season that it’s possible to grow quality grass and play high-level football in a completely dark facility. Breaking barriers for future stadiums to come. The grounds team was able to achieve a great result by reaching a pitch quality comparable to the European pitch standard. And that in a very challenging environment.

Another important result is the success the grounds team has achieved in disease prevention. The amount of light and wind is highly controlled and remains consistent, eliminating any wavelength effects. The UVC180 also plays an important role in this process because, despite these controls, the plants can still experience stress. Therefore, disease prevention is crucial.