MLB London Series: Soccer Venue Poses Big Challenges for Audio Team

The games might sound a bit like a UK football match given stadium geometry

Baseball returns to the UK this weekend after a really long rain (i.e., COVID) delay. As part of the MLB World Tour: London Series, the Chicago Cubs meet the St. Louis Cardinals June 24 (Fox Sports, 1:10 p.m. ET/6:10 p.m. GMT) and June 25 (ESPN, 10:10 a.m. ET/3:10 p.m. GMT) at London Stadium, otherwise home to West Ham United. The location has significant implications for the games’ audio.

The National Pastime previously crossed the pond for the inaugural London Series, between the Yankees and Red Sox, in 2019.

Says Joe Carpenter, A1 for Fox Sports, “Here for a second time, we know what we’re dealing with. The most important thing is how expansive the field is, converting a soccer stadium of this size into a baseball field. My microphones are so much farther away than they would be in any baseball park. Every baseball park’s unique, and you’re faced with different challenges in every park, but this one for sure is exceptionally so.”

He is joined on the production this year by Jason Knapp, mixing the studio set; Joel Groeblinghoff, managing the audio for the broadcast compound; and Shep Berkon and Mike Rew, managing the RF.

London Stadium, home of West Ham United, has been transformed from a soccer stadium to a baseball park.

To ready the football pitch for baseball pitches, more than 144,000 sq. ft. of artificial turf and 345 tons of infield clay has been installed on top of 4,000 tons of aggregate. Eighteen-meter-tall foul poles have been installed, and a batter’s eye, backstop, batting cages, dugouts, temporary clubhouses, and more than 46,000 sq. ft. of netting have been added.

To Capture the Sounds

Key sound effects, such as bat cracks, have to be captured from twice the distance in a typical MLB stadium. Therefore, Carpenter has asked field-audio technician Fred Ferris to adjust the DPA lavalier microphones used in the Big Ears parabolic systems placed around the field for a tighter focus, which will help reject more of the extraneous noise he expects from a Premier League-size crowd. (The 2019 New York-Boston series drew nearly 119,000 fans to London Stadium and was a driver in last fall’s deal for BBC to begin broadcasting a handful of games, including the London Series. The BBC will broadcast the London Series games and subsequent ones in the UK through 2026.)

Carpenter will also be deploying more shotguns around the field. “The crowd is really everywhere,” he explains, “including behind the plate, where I’m trying to pick up the [catchers’] glove pops. More microphones and narrower patterns are the way to overcome that.”

A1 Joe Carpenter: “The most important thing is how expansive the field is. My microphones are so much farther away than they would be in any baseball park.”

Complicating matters, the production will change from Fox to ESPN over the weekend. That, Carpenter notes, has reduced the amount of infrastructure — most of which will be over a Dante network — that he can field for signal transport.

“We’re going to be providing a somewhat turnkey production for ESPN’s production on Sunday for Sunday Night Baseball,” he says. “That presents a challenge because they do things a little differently. For instance, they have a three-man booth and have Tim Kurkjian down at low first [base], putting himself on the air as a fourth announcer. We have to accommodate a decent amount of changeover between Fox and ESPN, like showing number changes for tape machine and cameras.”

Basic infrastructure will also produce the clean feed sent to the BBC and other European broadcasters carrying the games, with Fox and ESPN acting essentially as the host broadcasters for the series.

In addition, Carpenter will be adjusting sonic processing to compensate for a different ambient soundscape: “A lot of times with back cracks, it’s more enhancing and adding EQ, as well as some compression on the bat. Here, I think I’ll be more often notching out the frequencies that I don’t want, rather than adding.”

Baseball Chat From the Field

What viewers will hear more of, though, is baseball’s latest audio element: conversational outfielders. At least one player per side will be fitted with a lavalier and IFB for two-way conversations with booth talent. (And the London Series will mark the debut of former Yankee Derek Jeter in the booth. So, no pressure.)

It’s hard to tell how the large crowd will react to plays without a home team, other than that any response could be twice as loud as at a typical MLB game.

“I think there’s no choice but to have it sound more like soccer than like baseball in terms of the crowd: very distant and full range,” Carpenter says, noting that crowd sound will fill out the audio’s rear surround channels.

The 2023 London Series is part of the MLB World Tour, which will bring MLB teams and players to the league’s global fan base. The tour represents MLB and the MLBPA’s largest-ever international play plan with regular-season and exhibition games to be played in Asia, Europe, Mexico, and Latin America through the 2026 season.