Artificial grass and genuine football : the evolution of artificial turf

Abstract

The article formulates, solves and draws inference from a game model intended to shed light on the evolution of artificial turf in professional European football (soccer). The main results indicate that quality of teams (sports performance-wise) define which teams choose to play on artificial turf or not. Furthermore, teams with low quality are predicted to be the "artificial turf pioneers", both model-wise, as well as indicated by some empirical examples. The fact that artificial turf may play a significant role also in the evolution of uncertainty of outcome is interesting and is commented on in the conclusion. Keywords: Game theory, artificial turf, natural turf