Fox's Virtual MLB Fans Can Cheer, 'Wave' and Even Leave Early — WATCH

Matt Webb Mitovich
·2 min read

Fox Sports’ Major League Baseball coverage will fill the empty, pandemic-era stands with digital fans that can cheer, grumble and do “The Wave.”

As Fox Sports embarks on its 25th season of “MLB on FOX” this Saturday (with a “quadruple-header,” detailed below), the network will debut its latest broadcasting innovation – “virtual fans” who can sport team colors as they fill seats that otherwise have been rendered empty due to coronavirus concerns/social distancing.

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“Utilizing cutting-edge Pixatope software, the network teams with Silver Spoon Animation and SMT to deliver an elevated viewing experience to sports fans around the nation,” reads the press release. Watch a video demo below.

In the name of enhancing such broadcasts further, Major League Baseball has distributed dozens of sound effects culled from the audio files of a league-sanctioned video game from Sony, our sister site Variety reports.

And perhaps most realistically: If the game’s a blowout, the bored onlookers (or those with restless virtual kids) can make an early dash for the parking lot. “If it’s an 8-to-1 game, the crowd can be thinned out,” Fox Sports production and operations chief Brad Zager told Variety.

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