KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A tech start-up company is hoping to fill venues like Arrowhead Stadium with the deafening sound of the hometown crowd, with fans home on the couch.
“We think it’s a great opportunity for people at home who can’t afford thousand dollar tickets to be part of that noise and to be more connected with their teams,” said Jason Rubenstein with Champ Trax.
The company’s newest innovation is called ‘Hear Me Cheer.’ It’s a free website portal that allows fans to enable a microphone on a phone or laptop while watching a live sports event. Champ Trax then aggregates all the remote fan audio streams into a single sound for the broadcast.
“If you’re alone in your home, what’s the point of booing if no one can hear you?” Rubenstein said. “But if you know you could be part of something that Pat Mahomes could hear, that’s being played over the broadcast, that’s really a different kind of thing.”
ESPN utilized ‘Hear Me Cheer’ for a boxing event on Tuesday night. The network also featured the technology during the NFL draft in April.
“It’s not as if we are pumping in audio from an old game, this is what real people are saying,” Rubenstein said.
The company is in talks with several pro sports leagues and networks.
Sports fans we talked to said they would be willing to give this technology a shot.
“Sports fans get their sports and people who want to be safe to flatten the curve also get to do that as well,” said Anthony Rodriguez. “So I think it’ll be a good idea.”
