Sports fans today don’t just want to watch the game—they want to feel it. From surround sound to live player chats, the push for immersive sports audio is changing how we experience the action.
This is why “all current trends from both the creative and technological side focus on the same objective: Access and bringing fans closer to this great game,” says Jason Hedgcock, Major League Baseball’s senior director of technical production and special projects for Apple TV+.
Hedgcock’s comments are focused on baseball, but his observations apply broadly across sports broadcasting. “The use of alternative audio channels has allowed fans to access games in native languages,” he says. “Placing microphones and IFBs on players has given fans the opportunity to better see the personality of the players in the moment of action. And Dolby Atmos has offered a unique opportunity to sonically place a fan at home in the center of the action in the ballpark.
“As such, I fully expect broadcasts to continue to lean into these workflows and technology to bring fans through their screen and into the park and onto the field.”
Casual sports fans want more access to player/athlete audio, according to Joseph Carpenter, an audio mixer for Fox Sports. “In golf, the player-caddy conversation continues to increase in demand.”
On network telecasts, announcers must be more aware of opportunities to listen in and, in some cases, are even instructed to lay out during these moments, Carpenter adds.
“TGL Golf is a new concept, with all the players wearing microphones and earpieces in order to allow the strategy and interaction to be heard at all times,” he says. “In baseball, it has become commonplace now to interview a player while he is on the field and actively playing.”
During an Apple TV+ “Friday Night Baseball” broadcast, Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa took questions from the booth while playing shortstop, “providing a look into how veteran leaders engage with their teammates on very human things like player health and how to best support a team,” Hedgcock says.
SMPTE ST 2110 Driving the Change
As more operations transition to SMPTE ST 2110—which allows the transport of uncompressed, high-quality media over internet protocol—the remote A1 [primary audio technician] has had to develop more expertise in IT and system networking, according to Florian Brown, ESPN senior audio supervisor.
“The interconnected nature of 2110 allows for granular control over devices and even complex systems like audio consoles from remote locations,” he says. “This gives us the creative freedom to manipulate incoming sources remotely, which opens up exciting possibilities for sweetening audio and isolating specific sounds to enhance the broadcast.”
Brown isn’t alone in viewing 2110 as a game-changer. Carpenter, a 35-year veteran, says he has seen a number of transitions, but “the current wave of audio-over-IP solutions is certainly one of the more impactful shifts I’ve witnessed. High-quality audio being seamlessly transported and decoded across varying platforms and hosts has become commonplace with the latest coalescence of 2110 and real-time protocols.”
Brown concurs. “As we reach the full potential of 2110 connectivity, we continue to push into a more immersive experience for the consumer,” he says. “The demand for richer audio certainly goes hand-in-hand with
higher-quality video.”
Giving broadcasters the ability to support multilingual audio commentary using 2110 helps Apple TV+, ESPN, Fox Sports and other media outlets attract viewers in an increasingly fragmented media market. But these two trends have to be deployed in tandem to deliver the desired result.
“In a diversifying media landscape, simply putting the game on isn’t enough to attract and engage an audience,” Hedgcock says. “You need to be creative in the storytelling. [Now] the human aspect of the game is one of the hardest things to capture, so the intimacy that audio can provide is a powerful tool broadcasters can use to drive humanity home. Rather than a simple natural sound mix to hear the roar of the crowd, a 5.1 or 7.2 mix can be used to place a fan among their peers in the park.”
Even Better Sports Audio Is Coming
As captivating as today’s multichannel immersive sports audio is, more progress may yet be needed to deliver its full impact to viewers.
“Much like the brief attempt to broadcast video in 3D required wearing glasses, I feel as though the current trend to deliver immersive sound to viewers at home will require a quantum leap in affordable home theater equipment,” Carpenter says. “That being said, the quality of audio being delivered to portable devices like smartphones and tablets is hitting its stride.”
As for the future of sports audio? “A fully matured 2110 environment for broadcasters and end users will allow us to isolate even more detail and emotion from a sporting event,” Brown says. “This will give us the ability to define the user experience at the source and deliver that to the customer as intended, without third-party manipulation. That is the ultimate goal, and we are well on our way.”
As fans continue to migrate to mobile devices and use headphones to listen to broadcasts, some of the next generation of innovation will focus on “getting the big sounds out of little speakers,” according to Hedgcock.
“Similar to how musical mixers leaned into mixes for radio for years, I expect sports mixers to listen to their shows on various headphone options, both over-the-ear and in-ear, to fine-tune their mixes,” he says. “I also think we will see even greater use of on-field player microphones, plus the reemergence of the all-audio games that MLB Network tested back in 2012. These games—where the broadcast team largely laid out, letting the sounds of the ballpark and players dominate the audio track—would offer an incredibly unique experience and can be made available as a complement to the traditional broadcast.”
Carpenter is very optimistic about sports audio’s future progress and impact.
“I believe now that video quality has reached such incredible heights, and super slow motion has become ubiquitous in instant replay for referee and umpire calls in all sports, that audio is becoming the next frontier in captivating viewers’ attention and bringing to light the true level of athleticism and passion we have begun to take for granted as technology advances,” he says. “In the meantime, I will continue to try to innovate new ways to push the sonic envelope and ‘bring it to the people’ at home.”
Again, all of these sports audio innovations share a common goal: Shrinking the distance between athlete and audience. In a world of fragmented attention and media overload, sound may be the clearest path to the hearts—and loyalty—of today’s viewers.
