With more athletes taking part in multiple sports seasons, facilities that can address more than one need are more important than ever. Designing your sports facility with dimensions and marking that can accommodate a variety of sports allows your facility to host more games, all year-round. Today, Sports Facilities Advisory will discuss some design choices that can benefit a multi-purpose sports facility and what a facility planner should keep in mind.
Why Multi-Purpose Fields?
In a word: flexibility. Multi-purpose fields are a cost-effective way to get more events to your facility. Not only can you host a number of sports, but you can also host tournaments for younger athletes where the size of the field is different. This flexibility in your ability to host events opens up potential revenue opportunities that sport-specific facilities can’t match.
What Challenges do Multi-Purpose Facilities Face?
One of the more difficult challenges of offering multiple sports is maintaining the quality of your field under consistent use. In order to accomplish this, many facilities have turned to artificial or synthetic turf to combat overuse. While the upfront investment cost is higher for artificial turf, maintenance is drastically lowered.
Using synthetic grass, multi-purpose fields often have multiple lines on the field at once in order to accommodate each sport. While this rarely impacts the athlete’s play, it can be confusing for spectators. In the end, this small drawback is outweighed by the convenience of artificial turf, but it is still important to keep in mind.
What Amenities Should Be Included?
Obviously, many of the basic amenities such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and concession space should be included. However, one aspect planners sometimes overlook is additional warm-up and training space. If you have five fields and ten planned games during the course of the day, additional warm-up space enables the teams in waiting to have space to prepare. This helps to streamline games and keep your facility on schedule. Convenient access to hotels and restaurants is also beneficial and should be kept in mind when deciding on a location. As tournaments are the bread and butter of multi-sport facilities, these factors are critical to your success.
Contact Sports Facilities Advisory Today
If you are contemplating building a multi-purpose sports facility for your city, contact the team at Sports Facilities Advisory. As the thought-leader in sports facility planning and management, the SFA team can connect you with the experts to ensure your success. Contact our team today at 727-474-3845 to learn more.
