Sports Media Report
HearMeCheer, the innovative and timely audio broadcast app that collects live fan noise and streams it into live sports television broadcasts, today announced a new agreement with the New York Red Bulls of Major League Soccer to provide live crowd noise for upcoming Red Bulls matches.
As the New York Red Bulls (RBNY) return to action, the club will utilize the HearMeCheer app to live stream actual fan noise, sounds, and reactions during their upcoming home games.
“Supporters are at the center of our matchday experience at Red Bull Arena,” said Christina Giunta-Quarino, the Red Bulls Senior Director of Field Marketing and Community Relations. “As we continue to prioritize health and safety, HearMeCheer gives Red Bulls fans an opportunity to add their voice to the matchday atmosphere at Red Bull Arena, supporting our team and making their voices heard from home.”
Used to great acclaim and success this summer on recent live ESPN broadcasts of Top Rank Boxing, HearMeCheer has also been successfully implemented in recent live sports telecasts in Taiwan, Japan, and the U.S, including the first live testing of HearMeCheer earlier this year with the Chinese Professional Baseball League in Taiwan.
As live pro sports return to American television this month, COVID-19 social distancing guidelines preclude fans actually being in the stands in most states. HearMeCheer’s patented technology allows fans watching the games at home to cheer into the microphones in their smartphones, tablets and computers and be heard live inside stadiums, arenas, ballparks as well as on radio and television.
Elias Andersen, the 20-year-old founder and Chief Executive Officer of Toronto-based ChampTrax, developed HearMeCheer in March and April in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and its far-reaching impact on the sports world.
“We are thrilled that the Red Bulls are putting HearMeCheer into the homes of their fans, and using it for their game broadcasts this summer,” Andersen said. “We’ve been building our company to provide real-time sports analytics over the past two years, but the COVID-19 pandemic and overall sports shutdown gave us an opportunity to reinvent our business and create the HearMeCheer app. We found a market where fans have been underserved for a long time, and that’s watching from home.”
HearMeCheer takes audio from fans watching at home and aggregates the sounds into one audio stream, which is provided to broadcasters and to feeds in ballparks, stadiums, and arenas. The sound from fans is converted into crowd noise using low-latency algorithms.
Andersen and his growing company believe HearMeCheer is a software platform that can increase fan engagement, with options on the platform for live trivia games and predictive exercises where fans can be asked what will happen next. With a Facebook sign-in, fans can listen and watch with a group of friends in other homes. Previously an Electrical Engineering major at the University of Toronto, Andersen decided to leave college this past January to devote his attention to ChampTrax full-time. While pitching Major League Baseball teams the young company’s sports analytics platform at spring training sites in Arizona this past March, the pivot to develop HearMeCheer happened while Andersen was on an airplane returning to Toronto as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the sports world.
