Every summer, the world’s best tennis players gather at the All England Lawn Tennis Club to compete on a surface that is almost as famous as they are. Wimbledon’s grass is a closely guarded part of the tournament’s identity – and a part of the intellectual property (IP) system that most sports fans will never encounter.
“The exact grass varieties used at Wimbledon aren’t publicly disclosed,” Stig Oddershede tells UPOV, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. “You can’t just pop down to the garden center and ask for the ‘Djokovic mix’.”
Oddershede is communications manager at DLF, a Danish company that supplies seed to more than 100 countries. High-performance turfgrass of this kind, he notes, is typically protected by plant breeders’ rights, with the focus on perennial ryegrass – the kind used at Wimbledon – selected for strong wear tolerance, rapid recovery, density and visual consistency.
“Wimbledon courts go through a bit of a transformation during the tournament, especially around the baselines, where players more or less try to dig their way to Australia over two weeks.”
Genetics, Oddershede adds, is only half the story; consistency year after year depends equally on specialized turf management. That combination – a protected variety developed over many years paired with on-site care – describes much of the turf used in top-level sports.
The IP right that underwrites this is plant variety protection (PVP), a system tailored to new plant varieties and governed internationally by the framework administered by UPOV.
“From the first cross to a finished variety, the process typically takes more than 10 years”
The UPOV 1991 Act states that, in order to qualify, varieties must be new, distinct, uniform and stable. According to UPOV’s database, nearly 7,000 varieties suitable for use as turfgrass are currently protected across UPOV members, covering tennis courts, football pitches, cricket grounds, golf courses and multi-use surfaces.
The process for breeding new turfgrass varieties
The timelines involved are long. “Behind the scenes, breeders work with thousands of tiny trial plots, testing and comparing different candidates under all sorts of conditions,” Oddershede tells UPOV. Breeders assess the wear, recovery, density, uniformity and climate resilience of the grass. “From the first cross to a finished variety, the process typically takes more than 10 years.”
The testing is exacting. Varieties are trialled across multiple locations and exposed to cold winters, hot dry summers and a range of diseases. “When it comes to wear tolerance, it gets quite literal: heavy rollers with steel knobs are dragged across trial plots to mimic the impact of football players.”
Crystal Fricker, a US-based plant breeder who has developed nearly 400 varieties across four decades, describes a similar timeline stateside. “Developing a turfgrass variety for global sports field use requires at least 10 years of research, crossbreeding, and testing across multiple locations,” she tells UPOV. “For the World Cup in Qatar, we began testing our varieties eight years ahead of the event.”
Plant variety protection for sports grass
Plant variety protection grants the breeder of a new variety an exclusive right, for a defined period, to control its production, reproduction, conditioning, sale and the export of propagating material.
Under the UPOV 1991 Act, the minimum term of protection is 20 years for most species and 25 years for trees and vines. In return, the breeder discloses the variety and submits it for technical examination.
Fricker describes the process from the breeder’s side. “Plant variety protection is a legal method for safeguarding breeders’ rights, acknowledging those who invest years and often significant funds to develop new varieties,” she says.
When an application is filed, morphological data must be submitted within the first year of selling the seed, and a comparison with standard and existing varieties confirms that the new variety is distinct. “This process helps protect breeders from imitation varieties or those that are simply renamed.”
“Many varieties may not meet expectations – 90 percent are discarded”
The system has an international dimension. “International plant breeders’ rights allow you to protect your variety in several countries,” Fricker adds. Applications can also be filed on a country-by-country basis. This route, Fricker acknowledges, is “time consuming and costly”, but worthwhile for safeguarding the genetics behind high-value varieties.
Without that legal scaffolding, the economics of breeding are difficult to sustain. “Developing new varieties is extremely expensive, often costing millions of dollars, and many may not meet expectations – 90 percent are discarded,” Fricker tells UPOV.
In markets without protection, products may be sold as “variety not stated” (VNS), with no guarantees as to performance or genetics. PVP, says Oddershede, is what makes all this effort worthwhile. “It gives breeders a fair chance to earn back their costs,” he tells UPOV.
“Without it, the incentive to invest drops and so does the pace of innovation.” In markets where protection is weak, he adds, fewer new varieties enter the pipeline and progress is slowed.
Testing new football turfgrass varieties for the 2026 FIFA World Cup
The link between IP and sports turf research is direct. Oddershede says that, ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a range of varieties were tested alongside research at institutions including the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University.
“Climate change is making turf management more complex, with more frequent drought, heat, heavy rainfall and disease pressure”
FIFA sets the standards and each stadium selects the variety that performs best under its specific conditions. “That level of long-term, multi-location research depends on plant variety protection. It provides the financial foundation that makes it all possible.”
Wimbledon and the FIFA World Cup are the most visible cases but turfgrass research is rooted throughout professional sport.
“Turfgrass innovation has quietly changed the game in a lot of sports,” Oddershede says. Modern varieties offer better wear tolerance, disease resistance, density and consistency than their predecessors.
Close work with groundskeepers and sports organizations, Oddershede adds, ensures that new varieties meet the different requirements for each sport. “In practice, this means smoother putting greens in golf, more stable footing in rugby scrums, and football pitches that don’t turn into mud halfway through the match.”
Developing climate-resistant turfgrass for sports fields
Integral to the world of turfgrass for global sports is breeding for different climates. Fricker highlights Pure Dynasty, a new species that performs in hot climates, endures heavy foot traffic and tolerates poor-quality water and soils.
Other recent work has focused on shade tolerance and traffic resilience, both relevant in stadium environments where light levels can be low.
“Climate change is making turf management more complex, with more frequent drought, heat, heavy rainfall and disease pressure,” says Oddershede. Breeders are responding by developing varieties tested under controlled stress and across different environments, with the aim of producing grasses that require fewer inputs while maintaining consistent performance.
“This kind of research is resource-intensive,” he adds, “and plant variety protection plays a key role by ensuring that breeders can continue investing in solutions for future conditions.”
Fricker points to specific traits being bred into the next generation of varieties too. “Plant breeders are working tirelessly to develop grasses that use less water and still maintain acceptable green color and growth.”
“Plant variety protection is what makes that kind of innovation possible”
Heat-stress tolerance is also being introduced into certain species. “IP rights encourage these environmental advances by supporting investment in new varieties,” she says.
According to Oddershede, tetraploid 4turf® perennial ryegrass varieties illustrate just what has been made possible through PVP. Instead of the usual two sets of chromosomes, they carry four. The result, in sports turf, is faster establishment, stronger root systems and improved stress and disease tolerance.
“Breakthroughs like this are the result of long-term breeding efforts,” he says. “Plant variety protection is what makes that kind of innovation possible.”
Making sports grass always greener
Oddershede and Fricker agree that successful turf tends to go unremarked upon. “If you don’t notice the grass, it’s doing its job,” says Oddershede. Most of the time, he notes, a pitch only attracts attention when it underperforms and, even then, the issue is often related to construction or maintenance rather than the variety itself.
For Fricker, the long view is also a personal one. She traces the foundation of her family’s research company, Pure-Seed Testing, to the enactment of the Plant Variety Protection Act in the United States in 1970.
“Over the past 50 years, we have invested millions of dollars to create varieties that have an impact in places like Qatar, Japan, Europe, the World Cup, the Ryder Cup and other renowned venues across the globe.”
The nearly 7,000 protected varieties suitable for use as turfgrass recorded in UPOV’s database sit behind a significant share of the playing surfaces used in professional sport, from the baselines at Wimbledon to the stadiums of the 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the US.
Each one is the result of a decade or more of work, conducted within an IP framework most viewers will never see.
This article has been adapted from two interviews published by UPOV in April 2026.
To learn more about IP in sports, see the latest special edition of WIPO Magazine.
