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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: When it comes to the surface that NFL teams play on, it seems to be an even split. I think 16 of natural grass stadiums and 14 artificial turf stadiums. So the split seems to reflect the debate that's out there over playing surfaces, differing views on safety, cost, maintenance, all that good stuff.
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Speaker 3: Someone who knows a ton about grass versus artificial turf with us, a key member of our sports coverage team, Randall Williams, Bloomberg News senior reporter, the co-host Of the Bloomberg Business and Sports Podcast. He looks like a field.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: I do today. He's wearing all green. I love your shirt.
00:00:40
Speaker 3: I love it. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Business Week studio. He's also brought to us Nick Pappas, Director of Field Services for the NFL. He joins us from Georgia. Nick, first off, Randall knows all this already, and he came by our desk to school us a little bit earlier. But for those who may not watch games all season long, just take us to, and certainly maybe take it for granted, tell us what's involved in just doing your job.
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Speaker 1: Hey, thanks, guys.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, so pretty much everything that touches an NFL playing field in some way runs through me and my team, right? So game day compliance for our domestic stadiums, preparation for Super Bowl and international games, And then leading the work on surface improvement with our Joint Surface Committee and all the research that goes into that. So it sits in a few different buckets. But if it touches an NFL field somewhere, I've probably had a fingerprint on it.
00:01:32
Speaker 5: Nick, you recently got back from Australia. You'll be traveling all over the world this NFL season, in large part because of the NFL's nine international games. I wonder what challenges those stadiums in particular pose. Those aren't NFL venues. Those are often European soccer clubs and also rugby as well. Tell me a little bit about those challenges.
00:01:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, every single location poses its own unique challenges, honestly. And every year over the last few years, we've added new markets, which add new challenges, right? A lot of the time, traditionally playing on soccer pitches, which are Shorter but wider, so having to do extension projects and construction, obviously having to bring in our yellow football uprights, having to make sure we've got the appropriate footers. Some of the things that obviously go with American football, discussions about paint are a big thing. We're usually playing inside of someone else's season. If you just saw at the MCG, they had some time after our game, they actually replaced their playing surface. I believe they're actually about to kick off, if they haven't already, the AFL finals. So a lot of different nuanced challenges in every market, in each of these continents, and then each of the site-specific conditions.
00:02:41
Speaker 5: And so one of the things, you just mentioned soccer, and of course the World Cup was here. We saw a lot of NFL teams replace their turf with grass. And one of the things that players said after they came up with this hashtag called worth the cost trying to replace the turf with the grass. But I've spoken to you, I've spoken to Jeff Miller, I've spoken to a lot of people at the NFL who say there's no direct correlation with injuries on turf versus grass. Can you speak to that a little bit?
00:03:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct.
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Speaker 4: So obviously, you know, we work closely with the NFLPA and we have a third party that brings us our data and presents it to us annually. And obviously we can look at that throughout the season to try and see trends. When we look at injury rate by surface type, breaking out, you know, natural grass versus artificial surfaces, it ends up being the same and it's been the same over a number of seasons now. So when we talk about injury rate, you're really at the same risk For a lower extremity, non-direct contact injury. So that's an injury that may occur lower part of the body without having a direct.
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Speaker 5: An Achilles, something like that.
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Speaker 1: Correct. Yep.
00:03:42
Speaker 4: So, you know, we've tracked those and looked at that extensively to try and understand is one, you know, contributing to injury more than the other. And the way it's been presented to us and the data that gets supplied to this, to this party through our athletic trainers and our clubs, as they track injuries and track our athletes on surfaces is, It ends up being a split, no statistical difference in either of those right now.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: Hey, Nick, why do some stadiums do grass, some do turf? Is it weather-related costs? What makes the decision for different stadiums?
00:04:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a number of things, right? The top goal for any venue that's an NFL venue should be to deliver the best possible playing surface on game day. Now, there's different things that may drive how that performance is going to look come game day.
00:04:25
Speaker 1: So whether you're in a warm season climate, a cool season climate.
00:04:28
Speaker 4: Whether you're in a domed or retractable roof facility or an outdoor facility, whether you're a venue that maybe owns the club or you're an owner that owns the venue versus a tenant inside the venue, like some of our clubs are in some of these state run or county run venues, whether you have multiple tenants or how the business model is set up to support that venue and obviously provide some sort of economic improvements to the economy, the local community.
00:04:55
Speaker 1: All those things go into it, right?
00:04:57
Speaker 4: So when we start talking about what should you use, obviously those are things that are part of the conversation. But the league, we present the data that we have available to us that we just discussed. And then we talk about the potential site-specific conditions that could impact what the playing surface looks like, plays like, feels like come game day.
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Speaker 3: What was the disruption that was caused by the World Cup to more than 10 of these stadiums around the country that had to standardize their surface for soccer?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, the World Cup and FIFA, and obviously I'm not part of FIFA, but from my understanding of the FIFA standards, they have a set of guidelines that boxes need to be checked, whether that's natural grass or hybrid or subsurface ventilation and vacuum systems. They replaced all of our playing surfaces that were at NFL venues, not just the synthetic ones, even the natural grass ones. When you look at Kansas City and San Francisco, Miami, those went from natural grass surfaces to stitched hybrid surfaces.
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Speaker 1: So Even there, they wanted to see changes.
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Speaker 4: So FIFA obviously wanted to focus on what they felt was necessary for their tournament at a certain time of the year with exclusive agreements inside those buildings and then executed in that fashion. We play in a different time of year over a longer season, not just a six to 90-day window, whatever the World Cup tournament was. We play from the summer through the fall into the dead of winter. And we have a lot more going on in our buildings than just one event. So it's not quite an apples to apples comparison when we try and look at the World Cup.
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Speaker 5: Real quick, Nick, last one. We have about 30 seconds left. What is the next level of advancement for the NFL and maybe whether it's turf or grass? What can be better?
00:06:36
Speaker 4: I think what we hear largely from our players union is that they don't like some of the options that are presented to them right now. They don't like the way it makes them feel, right? So we're looking at how can we improve the feel of some of these products, both grass and obviously very much on the synthetic side. So that's us, the NFL and the NFLPA through our joint surface committee. That's us pushing the industry to say, hey, let's get better. Here's the way to do it.
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Speaker 2: If anybody asks me, I want grass. I don't know what you guys want, but I want grass. Nick, thank you so much. Nick Pappas, he is director of field services for the NFL. And of course, our own Randall Williams. He's Bloomberg News senior reporter, co-host of the Bloomberg Business of Sports podcast.