The NFL and Sony have unveiled the new coach’s headsets, which are the latest component of the formal partnership announced last summer.
The headsets, noise-canceling units modeled from Sony’s 1000X headphone series, were initially tested by teams’ coach-to-coach technicians (the ‘yellow hats’ on the sidelines) in multiple games during the 2024 regular season. During the testing phase, Sony requested weather information for the previous 20 years of each NFL city to make sure that the headsets could handle all conditions, from the sweltering humidity in Tampa to the frozen tundra of Green Bay and the steady rain in Seattle.
Sony also tested the headsets against varying levels of crowd noise. “When we visited SoFi Stadium, it was 100-plus decibels,” Shunsuke ‘Gator’ Nakahashi, the company’s audio product manager, said in a presentation at the NFL’s headquarters. “In Sony’s Tokyo office, there’s a special room that can play back that kind of a crowd noise to make sure that the noise-canceling will effectively work in a very loud stadium.”
All 32 head coaches received their headsets in June, giving them a chance to try them out ahead of the preseason.
While the headsets are new, the coaches will continue to use Verizon’s private cellular system, which is part of its business group’s Connected Venue platform.
Financial details of the sponsorship were not disclosed. Estimates of the value of TV exposure from seeing coaches pace the sidelines in branded headsets run up to $72 million. Motorola reportedly paid $40 million for rights to the headsets in 2012 before Bose took over.
Sony and the NFL have been connected long before last summer’s announcement; the electronics company has supported the broadcasting side of the league for decades. The electronic company sees another payoff in its 35-year relationship with the NFL in how consumers will notice the brand along the sidelines.
“We’re working with a number of the players to do storytelling and really elevate our audio strategy, because it becomes a halo strategy,” Theresa Alesso, Sony’s president of imaging solutions, said.
That is, it generates sales of its products from additional demographics. “That type of strategy worked for us in the cinema space,” Alesso said. “A lot of the cinema film cameras, doing Top Gun or F1, trickle down … to next-generation [film makers] coming out of film school.”
Bose was the prior headset provider for the NFL, but its deal with the league expired after the 2022 season. The league went without a sponsor for two seasons before linking up with Sony.
Sony’s coaching headsets are not the only new tech that will come to the NFL this season. The league has also adopted automatic measurement of potential first downs, and it will rely on Sony’s Hawkeye technology to help referees with spotting the football. This development will bring an end to the constant use of chain gangs, though those personnel will still be on the sidelines as backups to the new system.
Hawkeye will ideally trim the measurement review time from 75 seconds to 30 seconds. The league said 12 chain gang measurements were used per week during the regular season.