Live From MLB All-Star 2025: FOX Sports Aims To Capture Chatty Players on the Field and at Bat Athlete audio has become so complex that it has its own mini audio department' By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 - 7:00 am
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The 2025 MLB All-Star Game (Tuesday 8 p.m. ET, FOX) will offer plenty of sound from the usual sources: FOX Sports will have more than 40 microphones embedded around the pitcher's mound, home plate, and the outfield; as well as A2-held parabolics along the base lines and so on. But there will also be more dialog than usual, and it won't be coming from the announcers booth. This year, expect even more broadcast chatter from the ballplayers themselves.
FOX Sports' Joe Carpenter: We're hearing the game like never before.
Aboard Game Creek's Encore mobile unit, FOX Sports A1 Joe Carpenter will be managing as many as eight two-way comms setups on the field, deploying Q5X PlayerMic transmitters and IFB earpieces connected to Lectrosonics miniature-receivers. It's a setup that has grown since FOX and MLB started with the 2018 annual midseason interleague matchup. This year, he's heading up what he calls a new mini audio department around live player audio.
We went from having four player IFBs that we'd swap around during the game he says. It wasn't a big deal for me to keep track of logistically, but it kept getting more and more ambitious.
This year, there'll be eight transmitter/IFB systems on the field, some in use simultaneously and some worn by the same player during defensive and offensive turns. That has necessitated the expansion of the audio team. In addition to Carpenter and his longtime submixer Joel Groblinghof, the A2 complement of Fred Ferris and Jason Knapp in the opposing dugouts will be bolstered by Kevin Delaney and Mike Figueroa, and the actual player chatter will be submixed by Dave Free, who also works with Carpenter in the same capacity for the TGL golf broadcasts.
It's an entire audio crew now, just for the player on-field audio, says Carpenter. It has become more than I can handle alone, like I used to.
Sports Strategies On-field athlete audio not only has become an integral part of sports broadcasts - he credits the walk-and-talk on CBS golf shows using Apple Air Pods as the progenitor of the category - but is critical for engagement strategies as sports become more of an entertainment proposition.
It's promoting the game, the sport, Carpenter says, at a time when some sports on television are seeing a decline in viewership, particularly among younger viewers. Putting a microphone and an earpiece on the player makes the game really come alive, you know? So we're relying on it more and more.
The practice is also in line with sports as an entertainment proposition versus a purely competitive one. The MLB All-Star Game has made that shift over the years: it was once the only time players in different leagues faced each other outside of the World Series; now, interleague play is a regular-season occurrence. This year's All-Star outing will also feature performances by hometown heroes Ludacris, the Zac Brown Band, and Jermaine Dupri. They will perform during the preshow, with Ludacris and Dupri doing an Atlanta-inspired medley while introducing the All-Star players. The Zac Brown Band will also perform the U.S. National Anthem.
More Sound, More To Manage But it's still a game, and the increased use of player audio means that the sound has to be more granularly managed, Carpenter says. For instance, a player who might have been nonchalantly chattering in the outfield during a pitching-duel becomes far more intense when at bat.
If he would rather not hear ambient noise in his ear at bat, he explains, I need the ability to kill that [sound in the earpiece] for him, because he could possibly be facing a 100-plus -mile-an-hour fastball. I would do anything that I can to help him in that regard, if he decides to wear this at the plate. I need the ability to be able to do that, to prove to these guys that I acknowledge that you're still playing in a professional sporting event and we're trying to get you to talk to us on TV simultaneously. We want to make this the best possible experience for everyone: the athlete and the viewer.
FOX and the MLB have been great about making this happen over the last few years, he continues. Now the players are all on board. We're hearing the game like never before.
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Live From MLB All-Star 2025: FOX Sports Aims To Capture Chatty Players on the Field and at Bat Athlete audio has become so complex that it has its own mini audio department' By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
