Sky Sports will draw on sound archive from FIFA games to enhance Premier League

On Jun 18, 2020

Sky will draw on 1,300 different chants, songs and crowd noise samples from EA Sports’ FIFA archive to enhance Premier League coverage as season resumes behind closed doors (and don’t worry, swearing HAS been filtered out!)

EA Sports has built up a huge archive of football chants, songs and crowd noise
It is used every year in the hugely popular FIFA series of video games
In all, the game developers have 1,300 sound bites and over 13 hours of audio
Sky Sports will now drawn upon this to enhance their Premier League coverage
An artificial atmosphere that reacts to events in the game will be created
It has already been used in LaLiga and the Bundesliga in recent weeks

Published: 05:10 EDT, 16 June 2020 | Updated: 07:46 EDT, 16 June 2020

Sky Sports will take advantage of an archive of 1,300 chants and crowd noises recorded for the popular FIFA video game series to enhance their Premier League coverage.

With top-flight action set to unfold without fans inside stadiums for at least the remainder of this season, efforts will be made to artificially replicate the atmosphere.

Sky has teamed up with FIFA developers EA Sports to create a soundboard of team-specific chants and songs that will be added to the sounds coming from the stadium and the commentary.

Sounds recorded for the popular FIFA video game series will be used to enhance coverage of Premier League matches played behind closed doors in the coming weeks

EA Sports has built up an extensive sound archive of over 1,300 chants, songs and sounds

And having worked on creating realistic simulations of football matches for gamers for over two decades, the FIFA team were ideally placed to help.

‘It varies for each club, but in total we’re providing over 1,300 assets that equates to roughly 13 hours of audio content,’ EA Sports FIFA audio artist Paul Boechler told Sportsmail.

‘From that content, we find the best bites and assets that will be integrated into the broadcast.

‘For this project, we migrated it into a unique format for live experiences and dynamic mixing functionality for the broadcasters to apply to specific points during a match based on what’s unfolding on the field.’

That means Sky’s sound crews will be able to react to the action with a huge range of sound effects.

For example, there will be big cheers and applause when the home side are awarded a penalty. Alternatively, viewers will hear boos and jeers if a big decision goes the other way.

Manchester City vs Arsenal will be one of the first matches as the Premier League returns

Sky Sports have teamed up with EA Sports to create an artificial atmosphere for the games

And if, say, Manchester City take a three-goal lead over Arsenal in Wednesday night’s big match we might well expect to hear a recorded rendition of Blue Moon.

We’re certainly sure to hear the pre-recorded version of You’ll Never Walk Alone when Liverpool seal their first league championship in…