With the pandemic robbing NFL stadiums of crowds, the league is working to still provide the sounds of a full house.getty images
As part of its plan to pump artificial crowd noise into its game broadcasts this season, the NFL hired 32 operators — one per team — to provide an audio score to the game.
These operators will be using a button panel to give game telecasts the feel of a full stadium and involved crowd.
“Those operators will be part of the network broadcast,” said Vince Caputo, NFL Films vice president/supervising sound mixer. “On game day or the day before, they will show up and interface with the broadcast team. The broadcast team will give them a monitor with their feed. It is a league-hired operator that will be actually pushing the buttons.”
For the past four seasons, Caputo led a project where NFL Films collected crowd noises from each stadium — 1,200 total hours worth of crowd noises.
Caputo’s team then edited the audio down, stripping out PA announcers and music. During one Giants game, the recording picked up sound from one young fan shouting to Eli Manning. Since he’s no longer with the team, they edited those kinds of references, too.
“We wanted to make sure we had good, high-quality recordings of all the local flavor from every venue as well,” Caputo said. “This is not canned crowd noise. This is you. We wanted to be able to authentically say that for every game broadcast.”
NFL Films came up with five levels of sound, from level 1 — the ambient sound of a crowd not doing much – to level 5 — the noise made after a touchdown. In between are crowd noises that range from a reaction to a 3-yard run to a turnover.
The crowd reaction also includes boos, which could be used when the officials call a penalty that the home team disputes.
“We’re telling these operators that less is more,” Caputo said. “We don’t want to overuse anything or use anything inappropriately.”
Separately, NFL Films is presenting each stadium with a 90-minute track of a general crowd murmur that will play at a low level in the stadium during each game.
“We want it to feel like there are people in the stands, but they are not reacting to plays,” Caputo said.
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ and read his twice-weekly newsletter.
