CenturyLink Field in Seattle has set records for crowed noise during Seahawks games. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

If there’s one NFL team that relies on its home stadium crowd noise as a competitive advantage, it’s the Seattle Seahawks. With 70,000 empty seats at CenturyLink Field because of the coronavirus pandemic, fake noise will have to stand in for the celebrated “12th Man” for the foreseeable future.

The NFL’s 32 teams will be using artificial crowd noise, supplied by the league, and pumped through stadium sound systems to replicate a bit of what happens during games and to make the entire experience sound a little better for television.

The Seahawks open the season at Atlanta on Sunday and then play the next two games in Seattle with no crowd, against New England and Dallas. The third home game, against Minnesota in week five, will also be without fans. The first that could potentially include fans is Nov. 1 against San Francisco.

But there are five teams that are allowing fans to attend games, in limited capacity, including the Kansas City Chiefs, who will let 16,000 fans into Arrowhead Stadium, another historically loud venue. In an appearance on CNBC, below, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed whether real fan noise would give teams an advantage in KC, Dallas, Miami, Jacksonville and Indianapolis.

 

“We do not see, and our clubs do not see, a competitive advantage at all whether fans are in one stadium or another,” Goodell said, adding that the noise created by NFL films is authentic. “Obviously the fans aren’t in the stadium, but it’s really their noise, it’s really their sound and their enthusiasm.”

It’s tough to imagine the Seahawks taking the field in Seattle without the 12th Man. The crowd has literally moved the earth in past, raucous celebrations such as the famed Beast Quake. And CenturyLink and the fans inside have been Guinness World Record holders for the amount of noise generated during games.

And the deafening roar has raised some suspicion in Seattle and elsewhere, where teams have been accused of raising the volume artificially to generate a competitive advantage.

All NFL teams, regardless of stadium type and attendance capacity, rely on crowd noise to some extent. Teams need relative quiet from the home crowd when they have the ball on offense so play calls can be heard; on defense, teams expect the crowd to be as loud as possible to disrupt the opponent’s ability to communicate.

In Seattle, during normal times, crowd noise is a celebrated and disrupting factor for opponents in eight home games a year, as well as any potential playoff games. The team has been trying to get used to the fake noise during mock games at CenturyLink.

According to an NFL memo last week, below, manufactured audio will be incorporated into the broadcast and be audible in the stadium. Pre-recorded, curated crowd noise will play on a loop through each stadium’s public address system. The decibel level for music and other audio prompts will be limited to 75 dBs this season and NFL Football Operations will monitor the noise throughout games to make sure none of it goes above or below required levels.

“The purpose of the curated audio is to create an audio landscape (i.e., a baseline ‘murmur’) that masks some field-level audio typically not audible in a stadium with fans,” the NFL said. “This curated audio is different than the dynamic club and stadium specific audio that will be used in the broadcast.”

The NFL says it will impose strict penalties for teams found to be violating the new noise measures, including fines, suspensions or forfeiture of future draft choices.