"School stadiums" are not leisure=stadium

leisure=stadium is about a place where you watch events and should have a substantial sitting places for spectators.

Both in Estonian and Russian school’s football field with a running track is often referred to as “kooli staadion”, “школьный стадион”, this leads to confusion and many map it as leisure=stadium. But schools usually don’t offer a lot of places for spectators. leisure=stadium is something built specifically to watch events.

A. Le Coq Arena is a good example of leisure=stadium. Though in Estonian scale I’d say that even a pitch with bleachers for 300 people could be considered a stadium.

So, how to tag them then? OSM doesn’t have an exact tag for this kind of thing.

  • If you don’t need a name, you can just map all of the sports offered by a “school stadium” (soccer field, running track, shot put pitch and long jump track) and not have a single enveloping feature.
    But if you want to name it, it gets complicated
  • If it includes many pitches and is publicly accessible, usually in villages, you may consider landuse=recreation_ground with a name
  • You can nest pitches. Have a pitch for a soccer field, have a running track and draw another leisure=pitch with sport=athletics;soccer around it all.
  • Put a name on a soccer field without drawing an enveloping feature

I’ve already converted many stadiums this way to something else while updating schools around Estonia.

If someone else has some other Estonia-specific caveats or best-practices, please share!

Hi.
I usually tag it with leisure=sports_centre - if it is primary for practicing sport, not for watching sport events.

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That’s one way to do it.

But I wouldn’t tag it as such when it’s a part of school behind a fence, not welcoming to public. When it’s public and free then landuse=recreation_ground usually looks better to me, as it allows to keep sports_centre tag about something which actually calls itself a sports centre and maybe provides some additional services like inventory, trainers, lockers, etc.

Often Estonian schools allow the use of stadiums or indoor gyms with lockers for a fee, though it’s not very advertised. Some sports clubs use it. From this point of view I can see it as a sports_centre.

Also, sometimes such “stadiums without bleachers” are a part of a sports centre already which includes both indoor and outdoor activities.