Everything smelled of popcorn: The art of bringing the complex sound of esports to fans with sound supervisor Matt Gilbert By Kevin Emmott
Wednesday, December 3, 2025 - 10:48
Print This Story
The Formula 1 esports Series at Fulham Broadway's Vue cinema
Sound supervisor Matt Gilbert has spent the last three decades working in live sports audio, so as demand grows for esports productions that look and sound more like live TV, Gilbert's experience has made him a go-to figure. It's the reason why he has spent the last few years bridging the worlds of traditional sports and competitive gaming, juggling audio mixes, fast-changing setups, and gaming quirks to create an atmosphere that matches the energy of a Champions League live final at Wembley.
Gilbert started his television career in the 1990s at Scanners HD in Nottingham and was drawn into live sports when the company won a football contract with BBC Wales. Quickly gaining hands-on experience in live football audio mixing and technical rigging, he expanded his skillset with the likes of Sky (cricket, rugby, football), ITV (including the Champions League), and BT Sport, and he still works with all of the above.
But as esports started gaining traction after the launch of the Twitch streaming platform in 2011, production companies started looking for people to bridge techniques from traditional sports into this new - but still basically scrappy - esports thing.
Having a background in both sports and in presentation turned out to be a useful combination, but the early years of esports was a far cry away from the glamour of the Champions League.
Matt Gilbert has spent the last three decades working in live sports audio, and has segued smoothly into esports
Everything smelled of popcorn
In 2017 I was doing the BT Premier League football and the BT Champions League with Dickie Day, a well-known presentation director, says Gilbert. That same year he was asked to direct the Gfinity Elite League, an early FIFA football esports tournament. The producers wanted to make it less like a YouTube presentation and more like a TV show, so Dickie was drafted in, and so was I.
The entire presentation was filmed at Fulham Broadway's Vue cinema. Gfinity had hired a single cinema screen just to do esports; they built a studio set in front of the screen for guests, and they built camera platforms off to the side where the commentators could stand. I worked on a little Behringer desk which was part of a flyaway kit shoehorned between rows of projectors at the back of the cinema, where you could hear all the films on either side of you. And everything smelled of popcorn!
That cinema was actually the UK's first dedicated esports venue and the Gfinity Championships covered a variety of games including F1 Racing, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Hearthstone as well as FIFA, and it attracted millions of viewers from the get-go. Gfinity was doing a lot of work to get some momentum, and it was broadcast live on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook.
It was an auspicious start: I'm always baffled that we were even doing some of the stuff that we were doing, but when you see the viewing figures they are in the same region as Premier League games, and they get millions of views as people watch it on You Tube after the fact, says Gilbert.
The Formula 1 esports Series at Fulham Broadway's Vue cinema
A similar approach
Fast forward eight years, and Gilbert is still juggling actual sport with esports. In fact, esports is more popular than ever, and the venues have shifted from a single cinema screen in Southwest London to some of the UK's most respected broadcast facilities; this year Gilbert has worked on EA FC Pro live broadcasts in TC1 at London's Television Centre and at Dock10 in Salford.
Post-Covid, Gilbert says the last few years has seen a resurgence in the amount of esports work he is offered; so much so that esports can often clash with real life football mixing for TNT and Champions League presentation coverage for US broadcaster CBS. Scheduling clashes aside, it is this experience that is the reason why he is in such demand, as companies like EA seek to produce esports coverage that look and sound more like a live sporting event.
Gilbert's approach is pretty similar to how he would approach a football match; it's all about getting the right information up front. In esports, audio routing and source management can be as much of a game as the content, managing audio from multiple simultaneous games, players, presenters and commentators, and dealing with dynamic assignments and frequent changes. And that's in addition to associating the correct microphones with the right cameras and players, which can be especially complex with PTZ cameras and shifting studio setups.
Dock 10 is such a big studio and this year they had nine games going on at once, which means 18 players, 18 games console feeds and 18 reaction mics coming into the desk, plus 10 presenters. The more information you can get in advance, the more you can whittle down the resources you need.
For example, I don't need reaction mics on the games that don't have PTZ cameras on the players, because they can be covered by a roaming camera which has its own associated mic. Meanwhile, I'll place a small microphone hidden under the monitor for the main games that have dedicated PTZ cameras in order to capture more detailed reactions of the players.
For these key games each player has two associated PTZ cameras, one on either side so they can switch the player's profile in the second half, so in reality the audio requirements for each player are exactly half as complicated as the camera requirements, but it still takes some working out.
Because we associate the same mic for both cameras it sometimes takes VT a bit of time to fo
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Everything smelled of popcorn: The art of bringing the complex sound of esports to fans with sound supervisor Matt Gilbert By Kevin Emmott 
