Iran’s “turf mafia” uses opaque stadium contracts, inflated costs and engineered turf failures to delay renovations, displace clubs and convert football infrastructure into a lucrative rent-seeking, kleptocratic network.
In Iran, two private companies have effectively turned stadium grass into a rent machine. Together they form what insiders call the “turf mafia”: firms that, through opaque contracts and deliberate mismanagement, ruin pitches, prolong renovations, and siphon public money out of football.
Ten weeks into the 25th season of Iran’s Premier League, two of the country’s most popular clubs, Persepolis and Esteghlal, still cannot use Azadi Stadium. Tractor Tabriz is locked out of Yadegar-e Emam, Esteghlal Khuzestan is homeless, ChadorMelo Yazd only recently returned to its own ground after eight weeks, and Sepahan Isfahan also plays on substandard turf in Naghsh-e Jahan and Bagh-e Ferdows. Behind these scattered crises lies a concentrated network of contractors and political patrons.
Azadi’s endless renovation
The renovation of Azadi, Iran’s largest stadium, is now officially planned to continue until the end of 1405 (March 2027). The contractor is Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, which in 1402 (March 2023–March 2024) took over a project initially valued at 1.9 trillion tomans (around 23 million dollars at the then-prevailing unofficial rate) – while promising to finish in five months.
That promise has evaporated. Esteghlal is playing its Asian fixtures in Qaleh Hassan Khan, and the Tehran derby has been moved to Arak, while officials in Tehran now speak casually of works running for more than 30 months, six times the original timeline.
In Dey 1403 (December 2024/January 2025), former sports facilities chief Hossein Tala described the contract as 18 months long, starting from Tir 1403 (June/July 2024). Meanwhile, the contractor briefly claimed that most of the work was complete – a claim exposed on 30 Esfand 1403 (20 March 2025), when the Iran–UAE match at Azadi was halted just ten minutes after kick-off due to a power outage. Officials later tried to blame rainwater.
The budget has ballooned alongside the delays. In 1404 (March 2025–March 2026), the contract sum was revised from 1.9 to 3.26 trillion tomans (roughly 23 to 39–40 million dollars). On 7 Aban 1404 (29 October 2025), the head of the Sports Venues Development and Equipment Company confirmed that, at current prices, the final bill will reach around 3.2 trillion tomans. In a separate report on 24 Mehr 1404 (16 October 2025), “Football 360” suggested the total could approach 40 million dollars.
Hybrid turf, familiar names
Tabriz and Isfahan, the two other major hubs of men’s football, face a parallel pattern. Tractor Tabriz, Iran’s only representative in the Asian Elite League and a serious contender for the later stages, is banned from its home stadium because the Yadegar-e Emam pitch has been destroyed during a botched “upgrade”.
The contractor there, Simkar Moghan, won a 64-billion-toman deal to install hybrid turf imported from Turkey – after normal tender procedures were bypassed. On 13 Aban 1404 (4 November 2025), Tabnak published documents showing that the contract’s value had been inflated from an initial 17–25 billion tomans up to 64 billion, and that government officials had personally recommended Simkar Moghan.
The investigation also linked the Yadegar-e Emam project to the same individual the Ministry of Sport had introduced, in a letter in Shahrivar 1403 (August/September 2024), to Mehdi Taj for the Naghsh-e Jahan turf contract in Isfahan. That deal was signed for 50.8 billion tomans, with an automatic price adjustment margin of up to 25 percent; by the third invoice, 64 billion tomans had been requested.
Tabnak named Sports Minister Ahmad Donyamali and East Azerbaijan sports chief Habib Maqsoudi as key actors and asked a simple question: why were public procurement rules abandoned, and how was such a major project quietly handed to a company now exposed for its performance?
The company behind these projects, Aran Simakar Moghan, was founded in 1399 (March 2020–March 2021). Its CEO, Vahid Akbar-Manadi, took over in Ordibehesht 1404 (April/May 2025). Stadium turf installation is not even listed in its official registration documents.
Sedros Sabz: from monopoly to mafia
Akbar-Manadi denies that Aran Simakar is a front for Sedros Sabz, the company run by Farshad Ostadjoo, long presented as the “exclusive representative” of a German turf brand in Iran. But photos and video of Ostadjoo at Yadegar-e Emam alongside Tractor officials undermine that denial.
Ostadjoo’s track record goes back at least to 1396 (2017–2018), when he led the turf replacement at Naghsh-e Jahan. The pitch deteriorated quickly; club officials and local media blamed roots being laid too close to the surface. Ostadjoo rejected this and argued that maintenance should also have been handed to his company. Sedros Sabz at the time priced annual turf maintenance at Naghsh-e Jahan at 180 million tomans.
Sedros Sabz presents itself as a family firm founded in 1356 (1977–1978) to build and maintain natural and artificial pitches. Its portfolio includes major stadiums in Mashhad, Esfahan, Shiraz, Qazvin, Ilam, Karaj, Gorgan, Bojnourd and Qa’em Shahr, making it the main grass contractor for the Ministry of Sport, the Football Federation and many provincial associations.
In Mehr 1403 (September/October 2024), Tabnak – without naming Sedros Sabz directly – described it as one of two “turf mafias” in Iran. According to that report, if a stadium’s pitch has not been laid by one of these firms, they work to ensure it fails early and must be replaced. The case of Pars Stadium in Shiraz was cited: despite having a boiler room, its heating system was activated only once for 14 days over two winters, and not at all the following winter, accelerating ice damage to the turf.
Sedros Sabz has also exported its model to Iraq, taking on the Al-Zawraa Stadium project, which ended up with problems similar to Iranian pitches. Yet in media appearances, Ostadjoo continues to present himself as the head of the country’s only “specialised” turf company with “German consultants”, blaming poor maintenance, weather and non-expert staff for the failures.
Kleptocracy on grass
The cumulative outcome of Sedros Sabz’s “expertise” and the work of its cover companies has been a string of national embarrassments for Iranian football: unplayable pitches, displaced clubs, cancelled or disrupted matches, and huge extra costs for the public purse.
What remains untouched is the network itself. Neither the Ministry of Sport and Youth nor oversight bodies have seriously examined the special relationship between this “professor” of rent and the sports bureaucracy, or the damage their collusion inflicts on public funds. Instead, contracts continue to flow toward the same cluster of firms. In today’s Iran, even a rectangle of grass has become a textbook example of how kleptocracy turns public infrastructure into private loot.
