What Will N.F.L. Games Sound Like?

N.F.L. games have become high-tech circuses. Players run through flames as they enter the field, pyrotechnics are blasted after touchdowns and heart-pounding music shakes the rafters, all in an effort to get the home crowd to be as loud as possible.

But as the 2020 season begins, nearly every N.F.L. team will enter uncharted territory as they host games without fans. The “12th Man,” as raucous home football crowds are called, is for now a victim of the pandemic.

The strict rules governing who can be in each stadium will dramatically alter the look and feel of games. There will be no cheerleaders on the sidelines, fewer cameras will pan the stands, and the national anthem will be sung live elsewhere or taped in advance. Because all preseason games were canceled, this weekend will be the first chance for many stadium operators to produce their new game-day programs in real time.

Yet facing billions of dollars in lost revenue, the league decided to let teams host some fans if state and local guidelines permit, creating a lack of uniformity among franchises. Some teams like the Kansas City Chiefs will welcome tens of thousands of fans for each game right away while others, like the Giants and Jets and Las Vegas Raiders, do not expect to host fans this season. Others will pivot during the season, adjusting to add fans as local rules on large gatherings change.

Coaches whose teams will play without fans to start the season have complained that the imbalance runs counter to the N.F.L.’s goal of maintaining what it calls “competitive equity.”

“I think it’s honestly ridiculous that there will be, on the surface, what appears to be a playing field that’s like that — inconsistently across the league with the different away stadiums,” Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott told ESPN. Spectators will not be allowed at Bills home games, but the team visits Miami in Week 2 to play the Dolphins, who will host some fans.

Though the league’s Competition Committee decided that there wasn’t enough of an advantage to rule out having fans anywhere — Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, said that stadiums have “varying capacities” even in normal years — the N.F.L. has tacitly acknowledged the importance that fans play in supporting home teams and confusing opponents.

Last week, the N.F.L. sent teams instructions for how stadium operators can make up for the lack of fans. They include the use of “league-curated audio” like a loop of prerecorded crowd noise collected from N.F.L. games played no louder than 70 decibels. It will be similar to the piped-in noise that has filled in for fans in the N.B.A., W.N.B.A., and England’s Premier League to help cover up the on-field chatter that may run afoul of broadcast standards.

Viewers watching on television will hear not only what’s going on in the stadium, but crowd noise that was recorded over the past four years by N.F.L. Films. “Sound palettes” were created with noise from each team’s home stadium that will be mixed into broadcasts.

N.F.L. Films grouped hundreds of sounds into positive and negative categories and low, medium and high volumes that audio engineers at Fox, NBC and other networks can match with the plays on the field. In between plays, ambient sound will be played from a pool of sounds that includes team chants and boos.

“Each stadium sounds unique and has its own local flavor,” said Vince Caputo, the supervising sound mixer at N.F.L. Films. “So we decided, why not lean in and make it as authentic as possible so we could say to Eagles fans, ‘you’re listening to you.’”

Caputo’s crew also created sound sequences to be played in stadiums, like call-and-answer chants that include music, which must be played no louder than 75 decibels so teams can’t overcompensate for the lack of fans by turning up the sound. For instance, in Green Bay, the audio mixer can play the music that precedes the “Go Pack Go” cheer and then play the recording of the chant. In stadiums where there are fans, broadcasters will also have live crowd noise to mix in.

Unlike most teams, which will start the season playing in front of empty seats, the Dolphins plan to welcome up to 13,000 fans, or about 20 percent of capacity. To maintain safe distancing, cheerleaders, T.D. the mascot and honorees like veterans and former players will not be allowed on the field. Kim Rometo, the chief information officer for the Dolphins, and Laura Sandall, the vice president of marketing, trimmed their game day staff by about 20 percent, to two dozen or so workers. The hype team and the workers who build the tunnel for players to run through will be reduced.

The remaining staff will rework their operations. Some staff, like the closed caption operator, will work from home on game days. Seats around the camera wells have been blocked off so television cameramen are a safe distance from fans. Video editors this season will work in rooms adjacent to the control room to preserve physical distancing.

The Dolphins and other teams are offsetting the loss of exposure by continuing to promote their sponsors on their social media accounts and other digital platforms, some of which are available only to season ticketholders.

“A lot of teams have said they will downsize, so they’ll have a video production show, but it will be less elaborate,” said Will Ellerbruch, who works in the live events group at Daktronics, the scoreboard manufacturer that has helped teams automate functions, like the playing of specific audio clips after certain plays on the field, as well as streaming video.

Even with all the planning, the size of crowds could change as local governments re-examine the rate of infection. In addition to the league’s guidance, Rometo said the team created a 65-page guide for Dolphins home games that included a bevy of scenarios for how to safely position the workers who run the stadium’s cameras, scoreboards and sound system, as well as the cheerleaders and mascot, whether there were fans in the seats or not.

“We have plans for all these scenarios and can execute on all of them, but we haven’t had a pandemic in 100 years,” Rometo said. “You try your best, but you just don’t know what will happen.”