04 Dec IU Ventures, IU Athletics, and EDGE Sound Research Bring Sideline-Level Gameday Energy To the McMillin Suite at Memorial Stadium
One of the ironies of a sports stadium is that the more premium seats can often leave fans feeling isolated and removed from the excitement of the gameday experience. But thanks to a new pilot program from the IU Sports Innovation Initiative and EDGE Sound Research Inc., an audio technology startup, IU football fans in the McMillin Suite at Memorial Stadium will get the best of both worlds.
Val Salomaki, EDGE Sound Research CEO and Co-Founder
“The IU Sports Innovation Initiative is a partnership between IU Ventures and IU Athletics to provide exposure and access to the latest in sports technology including wearables, performance analytics, performance sports gear, fan engagement and more,” said Jon Barada, Vice President, Engagement at IU Ventures. “This initiative aligns with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Sports Tech HQ, a nonprofit organization fueling Indiana’s transformation into a global hub for sports technology.”
Jeff Hintz, Executive Director of Sports Tech HQ and Myles Grote, Partner at Elevate Ventures, referred IU Ventures to EDGE Sound Research after successfully attracting the startup to move its headquarters from California to Indiana last year.
“Connecting emerging sports tech companies with Indiana University’s world-class athletic programs underscores the unrivaled resources our state offers to help entrepreneurs grow,” said Hintz. “This partnership marks a significant milestone for the EDGE team in Indiana, building on their successful launch at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.”
The EDGE Team had already been successfully working with the Indiana Pacers, and had built a demo facility at Gainbridge Field House.
“We had some conversations with IU related to the basketball and football stadiums, as well as the music school,” said Valtteri (Val) Salomaki, the CEO and Co-founder of EDGE Sound Research Inc. “After they came to the Gainbridge Field House, to experience the demo facility, everyone started talking about ways it could apply to the IU ecosystem.”
The group decided that the IU football stadium was an interesting use case.
“The big sound problem with football stadiums is that the most premium seats are behind glass and so they are disconnected from the game,” said Salomaki. “They are not getting the same feeling or the same energy from the crowd. And this is part of what makes it fun, people cheering, the excitement surrounding you. Not only that, in most stadium suites you also can’t hear the announcers because the speakers can’t reach the suite clearly. The goal was to create gameday ambiance in a suite, behind the glass.”
The EDGE team accomplished this using their patented technology, Embodied Sound®, which turns ordinary objects into high-fidelity sound objects that you can hear and feel. The hardware is the size of a Mac mini and can attach to any object, for example, a stadium seat. The software allows the EDGE team to manipulate the vibration of the object. When the object is vibrated quickly, it is turned into the source of sound.
Embodied Sound™ is the result of EDGE Sound Research co-founder Ethan Castro’s Ph.D. research, which focused on how to combine hearing and feeling to create a new form of audio reproduction that can be experienced by everyone. Castro, who was born hard of hearing, nevertheless went on to become a professional audio engineer and composer.
“There is no speaker, which can be hard for people to wrap their head around,” said Salomaki. “Everything in the world vibrates differently and we align the vibrations based on what the hardware is attached to. So, everything can be a full sound system, purely through vibration.
In the case of the McMillin suite, the fans sitting in the seats can hear all the sounds of the game—the crowd cheering, the announcer—from the chair. The EDGE team ran their first pilot in the McMillin Suite during the Indiana / Nebraska football game on October 19, 2024.
“We received a lot of useful feedback from the first game,” explained Salomaki. “The fans enjoyed how easy it was to understand the commentators and announcements and the feeling that they were in the crowd and engaged with the game. We even turned the system on and off so the fans saw the difference in how much they couldn’t hear before the tech was installed.”
The EDGE team worked with IU Athletics to optimize the tech for the McMillin Suite’s users and plan to spend the year-long pilot exploring how the solution might be used in other areas within Memorial Stadium.
“We are always looking for ways to enhance the gameday experience for Hoosier fans, and we are excited to team with IU Ventures to explore cutting edge ways to make that happen,” said IU Vice President and Director of Athletics Scott Dolson. “The early feedback we have received about EDGE Sound Research’s system in the McMillin Suite at IU Football games has been unanimously positive. It has enabled fans to enjoy the comforts of a suite-level experience while also experiencing the sounds of the game like they’re standing on the sidelines. We’re already envisioning how this can expand into other premium areas in the stadium. These are exciting times for IU Football and our fans, and IU Ventures is helping us maximize fans’ gameday experience in ways we didn’t previously think were possible.”