How much does line marking cost?

All football fans love to watch a football game, but have you ever thought about the work put into creating the pitch for the match? Ask anybody working in the turf management and they’ll tell you that getting those lines perfectly straight is not an easy job. Plus, it is expensive. That is when you have to do it manually. 

But manual line marking is a thing of the past. With the advancement of technology now the job can be done much easier, faster, and cheaper with the help of a robot. Turf Tank One is a line marking robot which completely changes the way pitches are marked out. 

Cost of manual line marking 

When calculating the cost of line marking, there are a few factors to take into account: labor and paint costs.

Football is the most popular sport in Europe, so let’s take this example and see the numbers. 

With a manual process, marking a football pitch is typically a job for two people, who require about two hours. The process is very laborious, dragging strings all around the pitch, using the Pythagorean Theorem to determine the correct dimensions of the pitch and then trying to keep a straight line pushing the line marker, along the strings. 

If you consider an average minimum wage per hour of £9.50, that takes the labor cost for line marking for the two people and the two hours involved to £38. 

Naturally, on top of the time spent on line marking, we have to also add the cost of the paint that is consumed. When you mark a football pitch manually, you usually need about 6 litres of paint, for an average of £15. This price looks only at the paint cost, without taking into account the price for the water used for diluting the paint, which of course would drive the cost even higher.   

So, if we draw the line, adding the labor costs and paint consumption, manual line marking of a football pitch would cost around £53. But there is a better option…

Cost of line marking with a robot 

With a Turf Tank line marking robot, things are more efficient, so much so that line marking with a robot costs only £5,60, reducing the cost of line marking by 90%. Let’s do the math. 

Because of its autonomous design, the robotic football field painter can mark the whole pitch all by itself.  The staff doesn’t need to waste time with the manual measurements and walk along the pitch pushing the line marker. So, the same job can be completed by just one person, who sets up the robot in about five minutes, using a smart tablet. That is a reduction in labor costs of 95%, which costs less than £1. And while the robot takes care of markings, the two turf managers are now free to focus on other tasks which can improve the quality of the facility.

Another benefit of a line marking robot which will be visible on the bill is the paint consumption. The robot uses a certified robot-paint, pre-mixed, which ensures the paint has the same composition every time. Thus, the staff will know every time how much paint they use and minimize waste.

Also, we are all humans, so naturally we cannot expect us to be robots and keep a consistent speed while walking the entire pitch. Some people walk faster, some slower and that leads to inconsistent results on the pitch. The Turf Tank robot however maintains a consistent speed and a consistent spraying pressure from start to finish, which dramatically reduces the paint consumption. As such, using the recommended paint, the robot can mark a football pitch with as low as 2 litres of paint, which costs around £4.80.

Plus, the robot saves the location of all the lines from the initial marking, so you don’t have to worry about the disappearing lines. You can mark only when the pitches are being used and thus reduce the paint costs even more. 

In conclusion, a line marking robot could be a great addition to any kind of sport facility, reducing the labor costs and paint consumption, while overall increasing the standard of the facility.