Name: How a Hidden NFL Field Revolutionized How This Stadium Makes Money
Uploaded: 2025-10-13T04:01:00Z
Duration: 9 min 6 s
Description: We went inside London's $1.5 billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to see the hidden engineering that helps maximize revenue.

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We went inside London's $1.5 billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to see the hidden engineering that helps maximize revenue. Photo: Sean Bould for WSJ

https://m.wsj.net/video/20251010/aded3bb0-3e57-40dc-98f0-4dbc7b09d699/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

We went inside London's $1.5 billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to see the hidden engineering that helps maximize revenue.

How a Hidden NFL Field Revolutionized How This Stadium Makes Money

Host: In a matter of minutes, this English Premier League field or pitch will completely disappear under the stands.

The best way to describe it is to talk about the Rubik's Cube.

Host: The engineering behind this stadium unlocks new revenue streams by transforming this English football pitch into a stage for world tours, a boxing ring, and even an NFL field. We explored the inner workings of this UK stadium to see how underground mechanics hide a 9,000 ton grass field to reveal an entirely new turf underneath. This is "The Tech Behind" a Stadium Transformation.

Hotspur Stadium has become a little bit of the blueprint for many, right? Long gone are the days of just having one use case. How do you keep a building open 365 days a year?

Host: Rolled up in a parking garage beneath this stadium is all 120 yards of turf that make up an official NFL field. As part of its global expansion, the NFL plays games in international stadiums each year, and this is the only one outside of the US that's been specifically designed for the NFL. That's because the field of play for English football or soccer is a different size than American football. And switching between the two needs to happen within a matter of hours.

So if we weren't able to transition in 36, 48 hours from football into NFL, it will be a complete disaster for us to either postpone, reschedule, or cancel an event.

Host: Technically, the NFL could play on the natural grass, but it would cost the stadium time and money to convert back to English football. So the NFL uses artificial turf when it plays here.

The sizes of our athletes and the intensity of our game, you can obviously get some level of damage. Additionally, we come with more lines, more logos, more colors than most sports are used to. So the ability for them to sort of protect their playing surface and allow us to play on another playing surface allows for that kinda shared business model that works so well here at Tottenham.

Host: That business case gave rise to this engineering breakthrough, the world's first retractable field that splits into three pieces. It allows Tottenham to keep its grass in pristine condition while also hosting and taking a cut of the revenue from other events, like NFL games.

The more events we stage, the more money that we can put into football.

Host: Here's how it works.

Jon: We've got a number of turns that we need to make to get all the faces facing in the right direction in order to solve the puzzle.

Host: To make way for the NFL field, the grass is split up into three massive sections weighing 3,000 tons each. Motorized platforms roll each of the trays into a parking garage under the stands. Most retractable fields roll all the way outside of the stadium, but Tottenham Stadium is in a dense urban area, so there's not much space for a spare field to sit outside. So the team clears this section of the stands to make way for the grass to be stored underneath. It has to be split into three sections in order to fit around the structural columns that are supporting the stands above. But first, the outside perimeter of the field is lowered 1.8 meters or around five feet below the first row of seats.

A very American design is to have the field 1.8 meters below.

Host: That's because compared to English football, American football teams have way more people standing on the sidelines.

Jon: If you get 150 team members either side of the field all stood up, then rows one, two, three, four, five can't see anything, you can't see past the players that are stood up.

Host: Each section is slowly lowered using a carefully-monitored hydraulic system.

When these are coming down, it's really important that we keep them level. If they were to get stuck at an angle, it would become really hard to rectify. We'd have to bring cranes in and things like that.

Host: If one side is just 25 millimeters lower than the other, an alarm will go off and the process will pause until they're aligned again. The next step is to split the pitch.

If you look down at the floor, now we're currently stood on our center tray. You might be able to just very, very faintly see the join there. And what you'll see is this east section just move away from the center.

Host: Before that can happen, George has to unchain the pitch trays to allow them to separate.

Part of the original design that it was gonna be held together with hydraulics. So you would have two hydraulic accumulators and they would keep a constant squeeze on it. Now the issue with that is if you had a failure, the risk is that it would just start pushing itself apart. So to sort of make sure that that can't happen, we chain the trays together with lever hoists.

And each section sits on a steel train, is the best way to describe it, which is about 110 meters long by 33 meters wide. And then section by section, we slide them out underneath the south stand.

Host: Next, they cover the giant drains, which help suck out any rain water that accumulates in the grass pitch. Then the crew spends the next four to five hours clicking in the final puzzle pieces of a PVC graded floor, which acts as a sort of shock pad, evening out the surface above the rails and creating an air gap between the asphalt and NFL turf.

Everything down to the millimeter's measured. We want the athlete to be able to walk the field, understand what they're on, and then go out and play, focus on football and not have any aspect of change under their foot be felt when they're out there performing.

Host: When the stadium was first built, the NFL field was stored underneath the grass pitch all year round, but it created long seams the NFL wasn't used to. So now they use a new field that's rolled out in shorter sections across the width of the field.

We have 47 rolls of NFL field, all of which weigh somewhere between three and four tons, and we bring those into the stadium bowl and we lay those out over the shock pad.

Host: Each section of the NFL field is labeled so that they go out in the right order.

When we lay the NFL turf, the forklifts are really tall, so we raised that just to give them a bit of extra room to come through.

Host: They're then rolled out and joined together with a Velcro-like seam.

During our inspection, checking each of those seams, we walk every single one of 'em by the foot, ensuring that one, they're tight and put together to the point where there's not gonna be any separation. And then two, ensuring that the infill and all the product meets the expectations as it was designed.

Host: In around 36 to 48 hours, the stadium is transformed for an entirely different sport. Meanwhile, the area under the stands is being transformed into a sort of grow lab for the natural grass.

What we're trying to do really is just put it to bed, put it to sleep for as long as we need to to put it under the stand. We put a growth inhibitor on a few days before we bring it out and we really start to flood it with our artificial glow lights. And then we try to get the new growth just before we bring it out.

Host: That growth is managed by controlling the type of waveform that hit the grass. Red light maximizes photosynthesis and causes the grass to grow quickly, while blue light promotes strong roots that anchor the grass. That combination is key for a football field that needs to repair itself after the wear and tear of a match, so the lights down here are made with a mix of the two colors.

This light is perfect for growing grass from seed. If you put a load of seed down first, put a pitch in storage, it's like shooting straight up

Host: The lights that go above the pitch when it's not in storage project a fuller spectrum of color.

Yeah, I'll be honest, if you were to put one of these pitches in your backyard, you would have a nightmare maintaining it 'cause they're very needy. There's a lot of work, more work than anyone can ever appreciate, that goes into keeping that grass at the level. I mean, every day or every couple of days, we will move the pitch around about a meter, a couple of meters back or forwards and that just spreads that light across and reduces the risk of seeing different shaded areas when a pitch comes back out.

Host: That's because if the surface isn't even, it could affect how the players are able to move around the pitch. But tending to the grass just inches below the ceiling isn't easy.

The guys are doing backbreaking work, they are bent down, they are sometimes lying down, pushing these mowers, trying to get it cut. It takes a lot of work to maintain this.

Host: All of this effort behind the scenes helps fuel the business model that keeps the lights on even when the home team isn't playing.

It's a multipurpose stadium, right? So while it's very common in the US with new builds, you know, Hard Rock Stadium, MetLife, SoFi Stadium, Allegiant, even Levi's, it's very rare in the rest of the world and specifically in the UK, because a lot of times stadiums are built specifically for football.

Host: But that's changing as new stadiums are being built to host a wider range of events with new crowds and revenue streams.

We sell about 60,000 pints of beer for a football game. We sell about the 120,000 pints of beer for an NFL game.

Host: Since Tottenham Stadium opened in 2019, newer stadiums like the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid have pushed the retractable field tech even further. Here, the grass descends into a four story, underground greenhouse, freeing up even more real estate in the stadium to host other events.

The engineering that goes into developing a system where a natural grass tray could live in one location, split apart, move into another location, continue to grow and be managed to the highest level of expectations, and then installing a artificial surface that would meet the, you know, professional level expectations that we have at the NFL is not exactly easy. Although it may be simple, definitely not easy.

As well as having a stadium that can be truly multifunctional, host all of the events that we want it to hold, generate the income that we need to be able to put back into our football it's the people that really make it happen.