A New Aesthetic: Plastic and the Modern Sporting Spectator Experience

Plastic has had an extremely negative press in recent years, much of it justified, but there is a world of difference between the single use plastics which litter our streets, and the lightweight, durable plastics that are so critical to the signage and construction sectors, and which have become integral to some of the best sports stadiums in the world. Step into any of them, and you’ll see that plastic is everywhere — from roofing and dugouts, to signage and branding.

Practical and protective

Polycarbonate is an essential material in stadium construction. Lightweight and highly versatile, it combines strength and impact resistance (it’s up to 200 times the strength of glass) with high optical clarity and light transmission. This creates a bright environment for spectators and reduces the amount of secondary steelwork required. It also maximizes the amount of sunlight reaching the pitch to promote grass growth and reduce shadows for the TV audience.

Allowing natural light transmission of up to 90%, polycarbonate ensures that stands and pavilions are well-lit, and spectators are shielded from the elements. Advanced materials like Brett Martin’s Marlon FSX or CS polycarbonate also offer co-extruded UV protection characteristics that cut out 98% of harmful radiation.

Credit: smaph.ru Sergey Makarov

Showing the way

Plastic isn’t just in stadium structures, it’s in signage and branding everywhere. Food and drink, toilets, exits, seating blocks, first aid; these are just a few things found in the concourse area that need clear signposting. When it comes to the planning stages for the interior of a stadium, it’s vital to choose a solution that is durable, printable and has a surface that offers the perfect foundation for contrasting colors that really make letters and logos stand out.

Foam PVC, with its incredible versatility, is an ideal choice. Some of the world’s leading plastics manufacturers have devised environmentally friendly options for digital and screen printing, cutting, routing, engraving, forming, vinyl graphics, bending, shaping, and bonding.

Foam PVC products are only a fraction of the weight of rival solid display materials of similar strength, making them much easier to handle and install. The smooth, flat high-performance surface of foam PVC offers exceptional finishes and the ease of its printing, routing and mounting means branding can be produced creatively and in a wide variety of formats.

Foam PVC branding can also be used in corridors, executive boxes and on the outside of the stadium, where its excellent UV protective qualities, mean the color can retain its vibrancy for years on end.

Easy to handle, highly versatile, and aesthetically pleasing, plastic sheets in the form of polycarbonate and foam PVC have earned their place in the most spectacular modern stadiums of today.