a pre-Olympic minipost
An hour into the first of last year's AVP beach volleyball tournaments a warning clickthrough page appeared on the event's Amazon Prime Video page. Amazon had been covering the AVP tournaments since 2018, but the pandemic forced a strict spectator-less bubble. During the previous two years they hadn't spared any expense. Now they had to keep viewers engaged. Rather than using sampled crowd audio and cutout spectators, they they focused on highlighting the event's audio. A sports audio specialist was brought in and dozens of microphones were installed on the main court, players chairs, coaches, referees, along with a number of moving microphones. The first match immediately was sprinkled with some rather colorful language - enough to trigger Amazon's warning clickthrough.
Watching the matches was something of a revelation. Sounds of the game ranging from sound normally masked by crowd noise to coaches discussing tactics with players during timeouts. The announcers had been coached to work around the new sound field. By the end of the first tournament the viewer experience was excellent. Similar things happened in other sports that took the "honest" route. Viewership often increased, while many of the major sports saw drops. Now NBC and other large networks around the world have to deal with an Olympics with empty stadiums. How will they react? A miscalculation could damage viewer engagement. It's a very interesting social technology experiment.
It turns out a lot of work has been done over the past sixty years. Sports like football (not the American variety), tennis, rowing, past Olympic games, and online games have driven innovation. Seven years ago 99% Invisible aired a radio documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews on the sound of sports. It's fascinating and worth the hour. Listen with stereo headphones or earbuds.
There's another fascinating question. How do athletes react to empty stadiums? That experiment has been underway for a year now. It's not simple.
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