A new hybrid turf field was installed in Frankfurt ahead of Chiefs-Dolphins game

The Chiefs won’t be playing the Dolphins on a brand-new field in Frankfurt, Germany, but it’ll be darn close to it.

Sunday’s game will be at Deutsche Bank Park, and a new playing surface was put down 10 days ago. It’s a hybrid turf field, and the Eintracht Frankfurt soccer team played host to Borussia Dortmund on Sunday in a Bundesliga game.

Eintracht will leave its home stadium and allow the NFL to have games there over the next two Sundays. First up is the Chiefs-Dolphins game.

The new playing field was installed by Tillers Turf and Fine Turf. Tillers shared a look at the work that was done in photos on X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube.

“Now, anybody who doesn’t know, hybrid turf is exactly what it says it is,” Richard Owens, technical manager of Tillers Turf, said in the YouTube video. “It’s a mixture of natural turf and synthetic fibers. Now, the synthetic fibers are woven into a base carpet. And this allows the turf to be lifted or rolled up into a big, almost like slab form.

“So that means when it’s laid down, it’s very heavy, and it’s ready to play pretty much straight away. Now for a venue like this which holds multiple functions, that allows them to bring the pitch back into play very, very quickly.”

Jeff Miller, the NFL’s vice president of communications, public affairs and policy, talked about the new field in a conference call Monday morning.

“We’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about surfaces and the appropriate surfaces and rely upon a number of experts to help inform us what surfaces are best to play on,” Miller said. “In this case, the hybrid surface which is primarily grass with synthetic fibers woven in for durability, was chosen by the experts as best to survive and perform well in two games that we are playing back to back, given the climate, given the forces of the players, the environment.

“So a great deal of time was spent thinking that through but it’s all about optimizing the surface for that individual stadium and experience. So the use of hybrid was chosen for those reasons. It’s got to survive two games being played back to back, perform well, and deal with the environment and the conditions in it.”

Owens has been impressed with the overall feel of Deutsche Bank Park, which has a roof.

“Like I’ve said many times, (it’s) a magnificent stadium, perfectly adapted for all these things, brilliant infrastructure, and yeah, just a super venue all around,” Owens said in the video, which you can see below.

Includes reporting by The Star’s Jesse Newell