Mid-Season Mini: The NFL’s Fake Crowd Noise Scandal

This mid-season mini shares the short story of how an NFL team secretly pumped artifical crowd noise into home games, and why it didn't work...

We'll be back next week with our standard Sports.MP3 episode format. Follow us on IG, TikTok, and X at @Sports_MP3 and on YouTube at @SportsMP3 to never miss an episode, update, or bonus clip.

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hey, folks, just a quick note before we get started.
This week, we're running a mid season mini aka an
extra short episode while we take a little breather in
preparation for the second half of the season. Don't worry, though,
the regular full length Sports dot MP three episodes will
return next Thursday. And since I can't leave you with

(00:51):
absolute silence, and since the NFL season kicks off today,
I thought it fitting to cover a quick story about
a sound design scandal in football. So without further ado,
let's get into it. At the risk of sounding like

(01:19):
a Hotels dot Com captain obvious commercial, the act of
watching sports is primarily a visual experience. It's literally in
the verb you watch it. But sounds can be just
as if not more important. We just don't actively realize
how crucial they are. Your eyeballs transmit the visual of

(01:39):
a hulking linebacker crushing a running back on your TV screen,
yet your ears they're the ones that transmit the sound
of the hit, emphasizing its violence and power. Perhaps the
most telling statistic that shows just how important sound can
be in terms of impacting the game is a simple
one home field advantage. According to a twenty twenty five

(02:02):
study by Paul Sabin, the NFL has the second largest
home field advantage of the four major North American sports leagues,
behind the NBA, meaning, on average, teams performed better at
their home stadiums than at away games, and while the
support of the crowd is just one of many factors
that play into that, it's clear that they do provide

(02:23):
at least a slight benefit. One issue with crowd noises
is that they can be manipulated or faked. During a
two thousand and seven game between the Indianapolis Colts and
New England Patriots, viewers watching on the CBS broadcast noticed
some suspicious crowd noises during a late game drive. It
sounded like the cheers of fans were on loop or

(02:45):
repeating over and over again, which could only happen if
the audio was being pumped into the stadium artificially. It
didn't take long for the incident to turn into a scandal,
with opposing fans demanding an investigation into the Colts. As
it turns out out, CBS was actually at fault for
the glitchy crowd sounds, as their broadcast had accidentally played

(03:07):
feedback from earlier audio of the game. Resulting in the
odd fake sounding crowd noise. In twenty fifteen, the Atlanta
Falcons were accused of the very same thing, and this
time the accusation had merit. After an investigation, the NFL
confirmed that for two straight years, from twenty thirteen to

(03:29):
twenty fourteen, the Falcons had been artificially juicing the Georgia
Dome with fake crowd noises. Their director of event marketing
had set it up, and the team was eventually slapped
with a three hundred fifty thousand dollars fine and the
loss of their fifth round draft pick in the twenty
sixteen draft. Fans weren't entirely shocked, as conspiracies about fake

(03:53):
crowd sounds in stadiums had been floating around for years,
even before the Colts scandal in two thousand and seven.
What is shocking, and maybe just a tad bit heartbreaking,
is that this artificial noise did not pay off for
the Falcons. Across the two seasons they used fake sounds,
the team had a home record of six wins and

(04:15):
nine losses. So if there's one major takeaway, it's that
fake crowd noise can't drown out bad football, and that
does it for today's mid season mini episode of Sports
Dot MP three. As a reminder, i'll be back next
Thursday with a return to the normal episode format. Enjoy

(04:37):
your weekend, thank you for listening, and I'll see you
next week. Peace. I got a talking about the don't don't,

(05:08):
but some didn't happen after