Pump Up the Noise: More Lessons for the Premier League from the Bundesliga

Photo by Federico Gambarini/Pool via Getty Images Fake crowd noise? It’s weird, but it beats the alternative. The Bundesliga is now 2-3 matchdays into their restart, and it’s a success so far. Or rather, it’s a success insofar as football matches are able to be played in a competitive manner while the rest of the world remains more or less locked down. If you’re a football fan it’s better than nothing, but it is a bit weird. It leaves us with the choice to either embrace the weirdness of it all, or not watch. Personally, I’m embracing the weirdness. Over the weekend, clubs started pumping out crowd noise into the empty stadiums. I would have been a “crowd noise skeptic” before watching a match. But after? It’s much, much better. Without the artificial crowd noise, it sounds as if...