Rumor: Pumped in crowd noise coming to the NHL.

The National Hockey League might soon become the latest battleground for a new idea that has become prolific across the sports world and may become even more prolific as we move through this COVID-19 pandemic. One of the biggest questions for sports franchises looking to resume live events, events that currently cannot take the risk of having stadiums packed full of fans in attendance, has been how to deal with the absence of crowd noise. Crowd noise may not seem like a big deal to the average fan but if you, like me, have tuned in to any of the recent sporting events that featured no fans it no doubt changed your mind in a heartbeat. The energy provided by the crowd, whether it be positive or negative, is infectious and generates a ton of excitement for everyone involved including the viewers who are watching at home on the couch. The one possible exception I have seen to this rule has been the Ultimate Fighting Championship and I think we would all agree that it is a far cry from traditional team sports like hockey, soccer, basketball, football and baseball. 

Crowd noise at the end of the day is an essential part of a sports broadcast and this has resulted in leagues returning with what many have called "enhanced audio" something that is effectively fake crowd noise. There have been different attempts at this that have been met with different levels of success and according to a recent report from the Associated Press we are likely to see something similar in the NHL and the other major North American Sports leagues. 

From the AP:

With leagues that already have returned using crowd audio, it is likely it also will be used in some form when Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL and the NFL resume.

So what does this mean for the National Hockey League? Well we may already have an answer to that question, although at this time this is only pure speculation. The Premier League and Spain's La Liga actually went to EA Sports for help regarding the crowd noise given that the popular video game publisher has been designing video games and using simulated crowd noise in those games for years now. There are two other leagues in North America that have exclusive contracts with EA Sports and those are the National Football League and of course the National Hockey League and there is now a belief that the NHL could go the way of the Premier League in enlisting the help of EA Sports. 

I have to admit I am entirely unsure of how this is going to be received by fans of the NHL and I strongly suspect that it will depend largely on how successfully the league can integrate the pumped in crowd noise. Thus far the projects have mostly been a success and with a potential partner like Electronic Arts on board I would rate the NHL's odds of succeeding here pretty highly as well. As with far too many things in hockey as of late however we will have to wait and see.