In the absence of fans, Sunday’s Bundesliga game between RB Leipzig and Mainz featured fake crowd noise on the broadcast.

According to The Athletic’s Raphael Honigstein, the crowd noise was added by Sky Deutschland, the German hub of the British media conglomerate Sky Group. It was optional for international broadcasters to pick up themselves, and FOX Soccer decided to take it for the United States.

RB Leipzig won 5-0 behind Timo Werner’s hat trick — the noise was not played at the stadium in Mainz, per Honigstein — and viewers could hear the canned crowd reactions for big moments.

Objectively speaking, it was unique and competently executed. Take, for instance, this Marcel Sabitzer goal:

That couldn’t have been easy to orchestrate. The crowd rises and hushes with each moment of the scoring chance, and it ends with the kind of muted eruption typically heard from away fans in a stadium where they’re vastly outnumbered.

We have plenty of questions about the noise — you might read more about it in this space this week — but Sky Deutchsland clearly did its legwork. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to prevent fans from attending sporting events, this could be the closest we come to replicating the experience. (All due respect to Borussia Mönchengladbach’s cardboard cutouts.)

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