Sports & Fitness: This sector continues to expand, and traditional flooring providers are getting in on the action – February 2025

By Darius Helm

The massive, sprawling U.S. sports and fitness market has been on a tear in recent years, and the consensus among industry observers is that the category will grow over the next several years at a compound annual growth rate of close to 6%. Most estimates for the size of the U.S. sports flooring marketplace put it in the $5 billion range, and the fitness flooring market is almost the same size. In recent years, several leading floorcovering manufacturers have started paying attention to this diverse and complex market.

However, adding sports flooring to manufacturers’ portfolios is not a standard diversification, like carpet producers adding LVT or flooring retailers selling cabinets. To adequately serve the sports and fitness markets means producing entirely new ranges of products with specific and varied performance attributes. And it’s not just about making and selling flooring; the specialization and the scale of the projects demand a more comprehensive and involved participation-more consultant than selling, in terms of approach, as Iannick Di Sanza, Tarkett Sports’ director of marketing, puts it. He adds, “In a way, we do sports construction more than sports products.” He notes that, depending on the project, Tarkett can do all of the design work, the permitting, and the building and surfacing of the venue-taking charge of everything from manufacturing to final installation.

MARKET OVERVIEW
Sports play an outsized role in American culture compared to most other countries and regions. In terms of professional sports, there are over 150 major league teams across the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS and NHL, plus all the minor leagues (120 in baseball alone). And there’s a slew of other professional sports, like volleyball, softball, bowling-the list has no end. One big piece of it is K-12 and collegiate sports, covering countless sports and disciplines. And beyond all that are the amateur leagues and sport clubs that continue to pop up everywhere, as well as traditional country clubs, and sports installations in higher-end homes and communities.

Then there’s fitness, made up of gyms, from national chains to local operations; yoga studios; fitness centers in hotels, apartment buildings, medical office buildings, military bases, government facilities; and fitness rooms in private residences. Another significant market is dance. According to Statista.com, there are nearly 11,000 dance studios in the U.S. totaling as much as 44 million square feet, and they all require specialized flooring and subfloors. An additional sizeable niche is competitive cheerleading.

Di Sanza notes that a lot of the growth in sports and fitness comes from a growing commitment to wellbeing and to being more active in general. He adds, “After Covid, there was a surge in folks wanting to be out and wanting to participate in group activities.”

DIVERSITY OF PRODUCT AND PERFORMANCE
Sports and fitness flooring are used indoors and outdoors. When it comes to sheer area, the majority of sports installations are outdoors-and that includes thousands of full-size stadiums, tens of thousands of ballparks, hundreds of thousands of tennis courts. Most of what goes down outdoors is artificial turf, making it the biggest sports flooring category, indoors and outdoors. Indoors is mostly hard surface and resilient products. Here, hardwood and rubber have the biggest share, and vinyl flooring also has a strong position, along with flooring made from polyurethane, polypropylene and various specialty polymers.

There are several major flooring manufacturers that have strong positions in sports flooring. Tarkett is a powerhouse and produces just about every type of sports flooring, including artificial turf. Gerflor is another, offering hard surface and resilient flooring across four brands. Shaw is a big player in sports turf. Ecore is a major producer in cushioned sports and fitness flooring with its recycled tire rubber products. An up-and-coming producer in that recycled rubber flooring market is Pliteq, a Canadian firm. And Junckers manufactures hardwood flooring for a range of sports applications, with a prominent position in dance.

Then there are the sports specialists. Robbins Sport Surfaces is a leading producer, best known for its wood floors, as is Aacer. Mondo, which makes rubber sports flooring, is best known for its track and field surfacing-including at the Paris, Tokyo and Atlanta Olympic venues, among others. TenCate is a leading artificial turf provider, and another big one is The Recreational Group. And then there’s Sport Group, which, like Tarkett, offers a range of indoor and outdoor surfaces, including a range of specialized turf lines.

Particularly on the sports side, the flooring produced by these manufacturers must meet exacting standards. And that includes the performance of the subfloor systems, which is why so many of the manufacturers that succeed in this market are heavily involved in not just the installation but also the construction of the entire flooring system.

ASTM standards for sports flooring are as comprehensive as they are diverse. Impact attenuation, vertical deformation, relative abrasiveness, shock absorption, permeability, surface finish effect, GMAX force impact-every aspect of a flooring system has exacting standards that must be met. Also, all the different organizing bodies of global sports have their own standards. FIFA’s turf standards, for instance, are different from the NFL’s. Every racquet sport requires a unique feel to the surface of its courts. All NBA and WNBA basketball courts are made of maple with a subfloor that maximizes athletic benefits while maintaining safety characteristics.

And it’s often not enough to just meet these standards. Sports flooring manufacturers, much like the athletes that use their floors, are in fierce competition. There’s a reason Mondo’s rubber athletic tracks are regularly specified at Olympic venues: since 1972, over 300 world records have been set on Mondo tracks.

SPORTS FLOOR PRODUCERS
There is no bigger presence in the U.S. sports flooring market than Tarkett, a French firm with a huge North American operation that got into the business with the acquisition of FieldTurf in 2005, then over the years expanded into other outdoor markets, like tennis courts and running tracks, as well as indoor sports and fitness applications. Materials used include polyurethane, vinyl, hardwood, rubber and linoleum-along with acrylic surfacing (e.g. for tennis courts).

Di Sanza reports that it’s only over the last couple of years that Tarkett Sports switched to operating as a full-service construction company, a one-stop shop, rather than using subcontractors or doing work inhouse on a case-by-case basis. He adds that the customer experience has improved greatly. Over the last decade, the division’s revenues have more than tripled to over $1 billion. Artificial turf remains the biggest sports flooring category. The firm makes most of its products, with the exception of some rubber systems for indoor applications, which it sources from Ecore, and wood flooring from a partnership. The firm extrudes its own fiber and makes its own polyurethane for poured applications.

All of Tarkett’s sports brands are growing, Di Sanza reports, with strong demand across most sports and fitness markets. With the commitment to active, healthy lifestyles trending through the population, many municipalities are moving to meet that demand with rec centers and outdoor spaces for sports activities. “At the community level, a lot of larger facilities are trying to draw in travel sports,” he notes, including pay-to-play rental type venues and tournament hosting, adding that these sorts of projects can not only bring in money but also elevate communities.

Growth is also being driven by the movement of people away from many urban centers to suburbs and exurbs. And educational institutions, from K-12 to colleges and universities, continue to invest in their sports programs in order to stay competitive. K-12 growth is exponential, says Di Sanza.

Omnisports vinyl flooring is Tarkett’s most sought-after program. It includes several multi-use gym flooring lines with Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3 shock absorption ratings. Many of these floors compete directly with hardwood floors. According to Di Sanza, while hardwood will always have its place, there’s a lot of demand for these types of high-performance heterogeneous vinyl floors installed over wood subfloors. “More and more facilities want to be multifunctional, and wood can have limitations, while vinyl is more adaptable,” he adds.

Another leading sports flooring producer is Gerflor, also a French firm. Gerflor does just about every type of sports flooring, with the exception of artificial turf, through several prominent sports brands it has acquired since around 2014, among them Sport Court, Connor Sports, SnapLock, StageStep and Harlequin-along with its Taraflex program under the Gerflor brand.

Taraflex is a cushioned vinyl sheet that mostly goes to the education sector, primarily for volleyball applications, including NCAA Division One, men’s and women’s. It also has a strong position in K-8 as a multipurpose floor. Taraflex, which has been around for nearly 80 years, is also used in senior living facilities and for indoor pickleball, along with other diverse applications.

Connor Sports is a powerhouse in the wooden court business, serving markets from high schools to the NBA, including the men’s and women’s NCAA March Madness. It produces its maple flooring in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, providing both the floor and subfloor systems, and working with partners for graphics, stains and other visual finishes. Connor has been around for over 150 years, before the advent of basketball itself.

Another layer of complexity in a lot of sports flooring is portability. Many basketball court flooring applications are constantly assembled and disassembled. According to Jeff Krejsa, managing director of the Gerflor brand at Gerflor USA, one of Connor’s clients, the Brooklyn Nets, actually has three different courts that it uses in its stadium with visuals tied to the different uniforms used on game night. The floor is broken into a series of 4’x8’ panels.

The firm’s Sport Court, which came to Gerflor through its Connor acquisition in 2014, and SnapLock, acquired a couple of years ago, both offer polypropylene tile constructions for indoor and outdoor use, designed for portability and easy of installation. One strong market for these products is sports clubs, which often use large spaces like convention halls for competitions, with temporary installations of up to 100 courts for a few days at a time.

With its acquisition of StageStep two years ago and Harlequin last year, Gerflor has become a leader in dance floors, from small dance studios to professional dance companies. StageStep is strongest on the studio side, while Harlequin is the leader in higher-end performance spaces. Both brands produce vinyl flooring, typically installed over wooden subfloors. Krejsa points out that often more technology goes into dance floors compared to other sports floors to mitigate the higher risk of injury faced by dancers, who wear no protection and are generally barefoot or close to it.

Shaw Industries has a strong position in the synthetic turf market through its Shaw Sports Turf business, which was launched when the firm acquired Sportexe Construction Services in 2009. Since then, the firm has completed over 4,000 successful installations, according to Muse. She adds, “We provide artificial turf fields for all levels of play from youth and recreational fields all the way to professional sports fields. Shaw Sports Turf is an artificial turf leader in Major League Baseball with The Texas Rangers, Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks all being partners.”

Muse notes that Shaw Sports Turf has an in-house testing lab and a patented tool, called the Playability Assessment Tool, that ensures its turf products meet performance expectations across seven different playability metrics.

Like most of the leaders in sports flooring, the firm is heavily involved in the whole floor system process. Muse says, “In the field industry, we do still very much work with the architects and the engineers that are part of the specification process. There are a lot of jobs that go out for bid, and then there are some that utilize cooperative purchasing to help streamline the bidding process.” She adds that Shaw Sports Turf has both an internal teams of installers and trusted installation partners throughout the country that work with them on projects.

The firm is notable for its advanced Game On turf manufacturing technology, which offers enhanced design and integrated line packages. “It benefits our customers in several ways,” says Muse. “The customer will see an ease of installation and maintenance because there are fewer cuts than in a traditional turf field. Additionally, there is greater opportunity for design and branding in a Game On field.” The technology was built inhouse by Shaw engineers and associates.

Another important player in the synthetic turf business, and one that’s poised to transform the market, is Card-Monroe, best known as a producer of innovative carpet tufting technologies, including the ColorPoint and Tailored Loop machines. Midway through last year, the firm rolled out its latest sports turf tufting machine, ColorPoint Sports. To date, it has installed two machines, and that’s likely to be followed by a wave of orders.

Like most of what Card-Monroe does, ColorPoint Sports is transformative tech. One of the longstanding problems with synthetic turf applications-mostly for football, soccer and some baseball-is the production of custom elements, like end zones and logos. Typical turf tufting machines can’t simply run off these designs. Instead, rolls of turf have to be individually produced for each color in the design, then cut up and stitched together to come up with the end zone and logo patterns, which then have to be affixed to the rest of the turf installation. It’s an incredibly wasteful and time-consuming process.

Not any longer, says Zach Monroe, the firm’s vice president of global sales and service. The new machine uses ColorPoint technology adapted to handle pile heights of 2-1/2”. In a 15’ wide roll, it can do up to six colors in custom patterns-a big step up from one solid color. Firms adopting this technology will never have to cut and stitch their designs again.

Also, colors can be heathered in and out now, something that could never be accomplished with cutting and stitching, so it’s likely to lead to a new wave of design aesthetics.

According to Monroe, the firm has been trying to develop this technology for 20 years or so. Once it started to focus on modifying ColorPoint and marrying it with its newer hollow-needle technologies, it took its R&D department nearly two years to come up with the final product.

One of the newer firms in the sports and fitness market is Pliteq, a Canadian manufacturer headquartered in Toronto that was formed in 2006. Megan Dobson, the firm’s director of commercial flooring, describes Pliteq as an engineering firm that produces sports flooring made out of recycled car tires, which it grinds into different crumb sizes for sports and fitness flooring as well as acoustical products, including treatments that go within walls.

The bulk of Pliteq’s products are private labeled to a range of partners, including sports contractors and sports floor providers. The firm is best known for its acoustical program, but it is currently focused on marketing itself as a sports flooring brand.

Pliteq’s facility in Vaughan, Ontario, which is not far from Buffalo, New York, has the capacity to produce 350,000 pounds of rubber daily, which translates to 175,000 square feet of 8mm rolled rubber gym flooring. Pliteq can produce thicknesses ranging from 3mm to 100mm, depending on the application. According to Dobson, the firm has so far completed over 10,000 projects. In addition to Canada, the firm has offices in the U.S., Dubai, Singapore, Australia, Mexico and the U.K.

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