Since its 2009 opening, all of AT&T Stadium’s football and most of its soccer games have been played on artificial turf, but nowadays the venue’s general manager sounds like an agronomist.
Tod Martin has become something of a sod scholar. He’s done it out of necessity. And fascination. And because his 82-year-old boss, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, demands innovation and expects excellence.
The 2026 World Cup, the largest in history and hosted in three countries for the first time, begins a year from Wednesday. Soccer’s governing body, FIFA, requires all 104 matches be played on natural grass. AT&T Stadium will host the most games — nine — including a semifinal on July 14.
Martin has held an AT&T Stadium role since 2007, preconstruction, and since becoming general manager in 2017 has overseen all of its events. Few if any tasks have been more important — and challenging — than making sure the World Cup grass is as pitch-perfect as possible.
“We want to be the forefront of technology, but also do it well,” he said. “I’d say a lot of that comes from Mr. Jones and the Jones family always pushing us to be the best – and to represent the brand in the best way.”
Granted, New Jersey’s Metlife Stadium was awarded the July 19, 2026 World Cup Final, but with AT&T Stadium hosting the most matches and its encouraging pitch prospects — some of which remain secretive — JerryWorld is positioned as the protagonist in North Texas’ efforts to showcase itself as America’s true soccer hub.
From early indications, Martin’s agronomic efforts will help yield a bumper World Cup for North Texas. Martin and his staff seemingly have turned a blemish into a beauty mark. A conundrum into a position of strength.
When FIFA on June 16, 2022 announced the 2026 World Cup’s 16 host sites across the United States (11), Mexico (3) and Canada (2), AT&T Stadium was perceived as the main hindrance in North Texas’ bid to host the championship match.
That notion was amplified when AT&T Stadium hosted the March 2024 Concacaf Nations League semifinals and finals and its imported grass field was described as “patchy” and “heavy.”
But three months later, when AT&T Stadium hosted two Copa America matches, a much improved install process resulted in United States coach Gregg Berhalter deeming the grass “a pleasant surprise” and midfielder and Little Elm native Weston McKennie calling it “world’s apart” from the Concacaf pitch.
“We got some really good , which is awesome,” Martin said. “No news is good news, usually, when it comes to soccer guys.”
When Dallas was one of nine host cities for the 1994 World Cup, North Texas was regarded as a burgeoning soccer hotbed. The Cotton Bowl hosted six matches, the pinnacle being a quarterfinal won by eventual champion Brazil, 3-2 over Netherlands before 63,500 fans.
“We know that Major League Soccer was the lasting legacy out of that World Cup,” said Monica Paul, executive director of the Dallas Sports Commission and president of the North Texas FWC (FIFA World Cup) organizing committee.
“That legacy is important to us,” Paul added. “And I think if we do this 2026 World Cup right, it will exponentially expand the growth of both the youth and adult soccer here.”
A lot to tout across the region
When the North Texas FWC holds a news conference Wednesday and introduces co-chairs Dan Hunt and Nina Vaca, it will have much to tout in its year-out status report.
Given North Texas’ geographic location, two international airports, 130,000 hotel rooms and penchant for hospitality, it’s no accident it will host the most World Cup matches and that the 38-day tournament’s International Broadcast Center will be in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
Nor is it happenstance that of the FIFA-approved 62 potential team base camps, six are in the Dallas area, more than any region.
This region has an estimated 200,000 youth soccer players. And it boasts professional teams: Frisco’s FC Dallas of MLS and Dallas Trinity FC of the women’s United Soccer League’s Super division. Another potential men’s team, Atletico Dallas of the USL’s Championship division, plans to begin play as soon as 2026.
Trinity FC plays in the Cotton Bowl, which is undergoing a $140 million renovation. FC Dallas’ Toyota Stadium is undergoing a $182 million renovation and since 2018 has housed the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
“In my position, one of the things I’m very grateful for is our professional teams and city leadership around the region to ensure that we have the best facilities,” Paul said.
In meetings with and speeches to North Texas business leaders, Paul makes sure to add AF – as in Frisco and Arlington – in any mention of the greater DFW area.
One of her primary jobs in her dual Dallas Sports Commission and FWC organizing committee roles is to get separate and sometimes-competing cities to row in the same direction.
“Usually it’s a little easier said than done, but there’s been a lot of collaboration among the main cities,” she said. “There’s 18 different focus groups, expert planning teams including safety and security, that have been working for the past year and a half.”
The collaboration has included area colleges and local pro sports teams, including the Rangers, with whom the FWC committee has worked to plan World Cup events at Texas Live, Globe Life Field and Choctaw Stadium.
Then there’s the Cowboys, AT&T Stadium and what had been the local World Cup efforts’ elephant in the room: the pitch.
“The Cowboys are always very strategic and want to lead the way in most things,” Paul said. “And they were very strategic at [last year’s] Copa America. They were able to get some equipment in there that might not be the exact system utilized during the World Cup, but they were able to test that system out.
“We’re having to keep grass alive for a pretty lengthy amount of time for this World Cup. So being able to test that out at Copa allows us to make some tweaks and fine-tune to ensure that we’re able to deliver in 2026.”
AT&T Stadium’s pitch efforts
That is because FIFA will control the field of play for all 104 matches in the expanded 48-team tournament. That also was the case in the 32-team, 64-match 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Since the Cowboys are awaiting direction from FIFA on some details, Martin only can speak to the efforts that went into AT&T Stadium’s 2024 Copa America pitch and why it generated positive reviews.
It’s also a reality that while AT&T Stadium’s four Copa matches occurred during a 14-day span, the nine World Cup matches will span 30 days.
Martin and the Cowboys, though, are acutely aware of FIFA’s World Cup pitch standards, if not some of the specific instructions it will have for AT&T Stadium in 2026. Part of Martin’s sod education was attending 2022 World Cup matches at Qatar’s Lusail Stadium.
That venue, built from 2017-21, hosted 10 World Cup matches, including Argentina’s win over in the final.
“I thought it was really neat to see the level of ion,” Martin said. “Some cultures were a little more subdued and some took it to another level.
“One of my biggest takeaways was observing their pitch program and how they built and maintained, what they tried to do and not do, especially within the desert environment.”
Arlington thankfully doesn’t have a desert environment, but having a largely enclosed stadium is challenging enough. For 16 years, AT&T Stadium has used Hellas Matrix Turf for football and most soccer matches and its retractable roof is closed most of the year.
Not optimal for growing and maintaining grass. Of the 2026 World Cup’s 16 stadiums, only six are exclusively open-air and seven employ artificial turf as their main playing surface.
Fortunately, FIFA is proactive in helping host cities. Shortly after the 16 sites were announced in 2022, FIFA’s Pitch Management Team implemented an innovative five-year research and development project, headed by professors at Tennessee and Michigan State.
Martin was among 250 attendees at the May 2024 FIFA Pitch Research Field Day at Tennessee.
For the 16-team June-July Copa America tournament, AT&T Stadium was the only venue among the 14 host sites to work with FIFA and the Pitch Management Team and implementing suggestions, Martin said.
It included using refrigerated trucks to ship Kentucky Bluegrass from a harvest field in Colorado. It included removing the Matrix Turf, initially leaving a bare concrete floor.
Starting three weeks before the first match, a crew of roughly two dozen began adding sublayers including drain mats, gravel, USGA-grade sand, an irrigation system and finally the sod.
To remain alive, much less thrive, sod needs sunlight, or at least a replication.
AT&T Stadium purchased large LED Grow Lights from Netherlands-based SGL System.
Mind you, Martin graduated from Texas A&M, not with an agriculture degree, but rather construction science and management. He ed Farmers Branch-based Manhattan Construction company as a preconstruction manager in 2005 and began working at AT&T Stadium during its construction.
When the Grow Lights arrived, Martin used his Aggie ingenuity, all the while consulting with FIFA and Pitch Program leaders John Sorochan of Tennessee and John Rogers III of MSU.
“We took their baseline requirements and started to even get a little creative,” Martin said. “As important as the pitch is to them, we knew that with us being an inside building, we’ve got to get Grow Lights in here.
“How can we do that effectively? I didn’t want to take Grow Lights and constantly roll them on and off and have extra wear and tear on the pitch. So I came up with the idea to rig them from our roof system and just lower and raise them.”
Sorochan and Rogers came to Arlington for the Copa matches. Publicly, there was a buzz around the matches when photos and video appeared on social media, showing the Grow Lights hovering above the pitch, creating a pink hue.
“We left them at a height where we could irrigate and mow and do all the maintenance,” Martin said. “To have a long-term sustainable system for the games.”
The Grow Lights can’t hang from the rafters year-round because stadium officials wouldn’t be able to open and close the roof as needed. The lights and 18 rigs required to cover the full pitch are stored in a warehouse.
Martin said that to his knowledge, none of the 15 other World Cup sites have implemented the FIFA/Pitch Program ideas – for, essentially, expensive World Cup test runs.
It’s his understanding that Inglewood, Calif., SoFi Stadium will try the system during Concacaf Gold Cup matches this week and next. AT&T Stadium will host the Costa Rica-Domincan Republic and Mexico-Suriname Gold Cup games on June 18 and the United States-Haiti Gold Cup match on June 22.
With so few matches, Martin said AT&T Stadium won’t hang the 16-rig light system from the rafters, but, rather, place nine rigs on rolling chassis. Still, it’s another chance for pitch refinement before the World Cup.
The Cowboys declined to reveal how much money is being spent on the pitch efforts, other than to say the costs are separate from the $300-million-plus in stadium capital improvements that began in early 2025.
Global visibility
As for Arlington’s World Cup pitch itself?
“Our FIFA field is growing in Colorado right now,” Martin said. “For Copa, we got the field down about two weeks early to get established. Right now our plan for FIFA is to have it down four-to-six weeks for further establishment; get the best product possible.”
FIFA requires that World Cup pitches be between 110 and 120 yards long; and between 70 and 80 yards wide, taking into each stadium’s dimensions.
That will require extra work, and costs, for host stadiums, most of which were built with American football in mind. While some specifics remain unclear, Martin said that in order to accommodate the larger dimensions, AT&T Stadium’s pitch will have to be raised roughly 28 inches.
“We will have to temporarily remove portions of 12 field suites for the corners,” Martin said. “Then we’ll put them back prior to the ‘26 NFL season.”
Oh, and per FIFA requirements, the venue must be renamed Dallas Stadium during the World Cup. That’s an easy, and temporary, alteration compared to the Cowboys’ other efforts.
“They lead the way in many things, so they’re a fantastic partner of ours,” Paul said. “I sometimes hear from other host cities about their relationships with stadiums and I feel blessed to have the Cowboys and our other professional teams.”
To put North Texas’ collective World Cup effort and stakes into perspective, an estimated five billion fans watched the 2022 World Cup through some form of media engagement. The semifinal matches each had more than 300 million in-home viewers.
That global visibility will make “Dallas Stadium” and specifically its pitch quite a center stage, one that Paul hopes will be instrumental as North Texas begins its next effort to host a soccer final.
Find more soccer coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.