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Maintaining a grass playing surface indoors, while technically possible, is prohibitively expensive. Teams who chose to play on artificial surfaces outdoors did so because of the reduced maintenance cost, especially in colder climates with urban multi-purpose "cookie cutter" stadiums such as Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium and Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium.
Baseball
From its opening in 1998 until 2018, but the difficulty of maintaining the grass in the stadium, which has a retractable roof and is located in a desert city, was cited as the reason for the switch. In 2020, Miami's Marlins Park also switched to artificial turf for similar reasons, while the Texas Rangers' new Globe Life Field was opened with an artificial surface, as it too is a retractable roof ballpark in a hot weather city.
American Football
The first professional American Football team to play on artificial turf was the Houston Oilers, then the part of the American Football league, who moved into the Astrodome in 1968, which had installed artificial turf two years prior. In 1969, the University of Pennsylvania's Franklin Field in Philadelphia, at the time also home field of the Philadelphia Eagles, switched from grass to artificial Turf, making it the first National Football League stadium to use artificial turf.
Canadian Football
The last stadium to replace their first-generation artificial surface for a newer one was the Saskatchewan Roughriders' Taylor Field, which replaced it in 2007; Taylor Field was the only major professional sports venue in North America to use a second-generation artificial playing surface, which was used from 1988 to 1999.
Cricket
Some cricket pitches are made of synthetic grass or of a hybrid of mostly natural and some artificial grass, with these "hybrid pitches" having been implemented across several parts of the United Kingdom and Australia. The first synthetic turf cricket field in the USA was opened in Fremont, California in 2016.
Field Hockey
The introduction of synthetic surfaces has significantly changed the sport of field hockey. Since being introduced in the 1970s, competitions in western countries are now mostly played on artificial surfaces. This has increased the speed of the game considerably and changed the shape of hockey sticks to allow for different techniques, such as reverse stick trapping and hitting.
Field hockey artificial turf differs from artificial turf for other sports, in that it does not try to reproduce a grass "feel", being made of shorter fibers. This shorter fiber structure allows the improvement in speed brought by earlier artificial turfs to be retained. This development in the game, however, is problematic for many local communities who often cannot afford to build two artificial fields: one for field hockey and one for other sports. The International Hockey Federation and manufacturers are driving research in order to produce new fields that will be suitable for a variety of sports.
The use of artificial turf in conjunction with changes in the game's rules (e.g., the removal of offside, introduction of rolling substitutes and the self-pass, and to the interpretation of obstruction) have contributed significantly to change the nature of the game, greatly increasing the speed and intensity of play as well as placing far greater demands on the conditioning of the players.
Rugby
Rugby also uses artificial surfaces at a professional level. Infill fields are used by English premiership rugby teams Saracens F.C. and Worcester Warriors, as well as Pro14 teams Cardiff Blues and Glasgow Warriors. Some fields, including Twickenham Stadium, have incorporated a hybrid field, with grass and synthetic fibers used on the surface. This allows for the field to be much more hard wearing, making it less susceptible to weather conditions and frequent use.
Tennis
After the introduction of artificial turf, it came to be used for tennis courts, both indoor and outdoor, though only a small minority of courts use the surface.
Golf
Synthetic turf can also be used in the golf industry, such as on driving ranges, putting greens and even in some circumstances tee boxes. Because of the vast areas of golf courses and the damage from clubs during shots, it is not feasible to surface fairways with artificial turf.
Motor Racing
Artificial grass is used to line the perimeter of some sections of some motor circuits, and offers less grip than some other surfaces. It can pose an obstacle to drivers if it gets caught on their car.
