NEWS
EA Sports to provide crowd noise for Spain's La Liga
The buzz around professional football locker rooms isn't that games are returning, it's word that the game will be accompanied by real crowd noise provided by EA Sports!
Spain's La Liga started up on Thursday June 11th with it's first live broadcast since the Covid-19 issue began some three months ago. Sevilla's 2-0 win over Real Betis contained real crowd noise and sounds recorded by EA Sports. Unfortunately the only people in the stadium were the players and staff but at least real life sounds accompanied the action.
EA has a large sound data base that has been gathered over the years for their franchise soccer title, FIFA. The crowd noise wasn't from some generic game it was genuine game sounds from a past match that took place in the stadium where the game was played. England's Premier League will be returning to real life action starting on Wednesday June 17th and actual recorded game sound will be used for the Arsenal versus Manchester City match and then others.
Germany's Bundesliga started playing again a couple of weeks ago and there was absolutely no sounds other than the announcers back and forth banter. I tried watching but there was something missing. The match seemed to be a strange sleep walk affair consisting of a bunch of guys running around kicking a ball. I obviously knew that the crowd was missing but I didn't realize why the game seemed to be so boring. It was the excited cheers from the crowd when a goal was scored that was missing! Luckily television producers realized the same thing that I did and it prompted them to approach EA Sports to obtain the badly needed sound effects.
There will be sound engineers present and they will have access to over 800 prerecorded sounds. Now fans viewing on TV won't be presented with silence or a dry comment from an announcer when something happens. Viewers will hear the roar of real people cheering when a goal is scored or when fans angrily jeer at the ref for giving a yellow card to their favorite player! Even-though the fans won't be there, thank goodness their sounds will be present for televised matches.
Technology these days really is amazing...