| The quiet time in sports may already be coming to an end. No, not the quiet bit where we were devoid of sports altogether — but the part where the television audience could hear every shout, whistle and piece of coaching advice. Games are about to get noisy again, it seems, with a variety of different leagues, organizations and broadcasters leaning towards pumped-in or digitally generated crowd sounds to compensate for the fact that COVID-19 means the stands remain empty. |
It has already been successfully trialed in soccer, with Spain’s La Liga having kicked things off last weekend. The English Premier League will follow this weekend. The NBA is reportedly considering plans to bring in simulated crowd atmosphere into its Orlando hub when pro basketball tips off on July 31. And the National Football League might follow suit in the event there are games where fans cannot attend once the season starts. “Enough silence already,” avid sports fan Chelsea Soden told me. “For a while it was cool to be able to hear everything. But the more things have returned closer to normal in life, you want that from the sports you watch too. The quiet is still kind of eerie, although I did get used to it pretty quickly.” It was indeed a neat experience to get a closer audio perspective from the earliest sports to come back after everything got shuttered by the pandemic. Telecasts of the Ultimate Fighting Championship went ahead smoothly, with the sound being created by enthusiastic broadcasters and amped up coaches exhorting their charges to more effort and spouting tactical advice. The thwack of physical contact brought home just what a demanding and unrelenting sport mixed martial arts is. On the other end of the spectrum, the silence has helped give a glimpse inside the minds of some of the biggest names in golf, from Phil Mickelson during “The Match” to Rickie Fowler being mic’d up for the PGA’s return to action Thursday.  Games from German Bundesliga soccer have had some sound introduced, but on a low level that still allows the viewers to hear coaches shouting at players and the athletes interacting with each other. They’ve all been uniquely entertaining. However, it may be that sports fans have gone too long without the roar of a crowd — and once they get a taste of it, there will be a clamor for more. La Liga collaborated with gaming giant EA Sports and did it well, coming up with a positive replica of a typical match experience. “We are thinking of this as a televised entertainment spectacle,” La Liga’s audiovisual director Melcior Soler told The Athletic. “What we are going to do is make you recall what you are used to seeing when the stadiums are full.” To add to the vibe, La Liga also paired with Norwegian technology company Vizart to create a visual impression of a live audience for the television viewers.  In English soccer, tradition is everything and change is often regarded with reluctance, which is why the introduction of crowd noise, also through EA Sports, is a big story as the EPL gets underway once more. It might not appeal to the traditionalists — “It’s not a good idea,” Sky Sports news soccer presenter Aidan Magee told me via text on Friday. “It leaves clubs open to ridicule,”— but having a sense of buzz is seen as being crucial as the league aims to come back with a bang. The NBA does not return until July 31, so it has some time in which to make a decision. However, several reports have suggested the league is considering using sound from the NBA 2K video game series. Basketball gets quickly into the heart of the action, with a short, eight game conclusion to the regular season and then straight into the playoffs. Surrounding sound during the playoff matchups especially, would seem to be welcome. The NFL has the luxury of sitting back and seeing what works best for everyone else before making its move. Given the passion and energy of pro football however, it would seem that such an addition would be well received. “I think FOX and these networks have to put crowd noise under us to make it as normal a viewing experience at home,” Buck told the Sirius XM show Radio Andy last month. One thing to consider is that we are now accustomed to things we never thought we would get used to. When COVID-19’s effects started to make their initial impact on sports, I believed that playing games without fans would never work. It took just a few weeks of an empty schedule to realize that position was totally wrong, with the appetite for sports, any sports, growing with each barren day. So, while fake noise isn’t ideal, it might be a solution that quickly starts to feel normal. As technological advances have continued with dizzying speed, the realism in video games such as those from EA Sports edges closer and closer to reality. It was right that sports shut down, and there was nothing we could do about it. In the name of safety, it is obviously important that fans are kept away from stadiums, at least for the time being. However, atmosphere that stirs up the feeling of energized passion has been sorely missing for a long time now, and perhaps it doesn’t need to be any longer. Will fans and players react just as positively to noise being injected by technology as they would to the authentic roars of thousands? We are about to find out. Here’s what others have said… Sam Byford, The Verge: “The virtual fans aren’t CGI representations of individual humans like you’d see in FIFA 20. Instead, the stands are blanketed in a static texture that does a surprisingly good job of looking like a crowd, so long as your actual attention is focused on the action on the pitch. It looks more like a ‘90s video game or a stereogram if you look at it up close, but overall the effect is pretty convincing. I’d take it over empty seats. The audio, meanwhile, takes a similar approach. It’s not much like an actual football crowd with people chanting songs or yelling expletives at the referee, but it adds an emotive layer to the proceedings. There’s a constant hum of background noise that shifts in volume and excitement in accordance with the action, and you still get the release of a crowd roaring whenever there’s a goal.” Brad Stevens, Boston Celtics head coach: “I’ve given a lot of thought to all of this stuff — I’ve been sitting in my house for three months so I’ve thought about this stuff over and over. I think people want to hear more of coaches, players, referees and the dialogue between everybody. If we do get in that scenario, I’m interested to see what the league would decide with pumping in noise or not. The voices of the game would be a whole new world and a lot of fun. It would be most impactful in what these guys do from possession to possession and how much communication goes into it.” Nate Scott, USA Today: “Yes, it can feel a bit uncanny to hear crowd noise and then look up and see empty seats. But soccer is a game that relies on atmosphere as much as anything. Your eyes are on the field for the most part, so you don’t notice the disparity much. With the chants, it feels like a soccer game. I’ll admit: I thought this wasn’t going to work. And I’ll admit that I was totally wrong. It does work; it makes the game feel more special and real.” |
