What you hear from the crowd is a production decision

Effect microphones, a mixed crowd bed and a set of editorial rules determine the atmosphere a viewer believes is in the ground.

The roar you hear at home is built. Not faked, in any legitimate production, but built: two dozen or more effect microphones placed around the bowl, a crowd bed mixed to a level the audio supervisor chooses, commentary sitting on top of it, and a set of decisions about which sections to favour that are made in a truck by someone with an editorial view about what the night is supposed to feel like.

Those decisions carry weight. Push the away end up in the mix and a match sounds contested. Favour the home stand behind the goal and it sounds like a siege. Ride the level down during a lull and the viewer never learns the ground went flat for twenty minutes, which is information about the contest that has quietly been withheld.

I do not think any of that is dishonest by default. Every broadcast is a set of choices and unmixed venue audio is close to unlistenable. What I object to is the pretence that the audio is neutral while the pictures are directed. Everyone accepts that camera positions and replay selection are editorial. Sound gets treated as an environmental capture, and it is nothing of the sort.

The stakes rise when the mix is used to hide something. Crowd noise that is deliberately lifted over audible abuse from a stand is a decision made in real time, usually defended as protecting the broadcast, and it means the largest audience for an incident is the one least able to know it happened. There is a reasonable argument for it. There should at least be a stated policy.

There is also a commercial pull towards a louder, flatter sound, because atmosphere sells and half-empty midweek fixtures do not. Add reinforcement, favour the loud corner, and the product improves while the venue's actual problem stays invisible to the people who could fix it.

Ask a broadcaster to publish its crowd audio policy. The reply will be that these are craft judgments made match by match, which is true, and which is also what everybody says about decisions they would rather not write down.