Sony’s NFL tech overhaul goes from the chain gang to coaches’ headphones

As part of a new partnership with the NFL, Sony is developing a new set of headphones for NFL coaches that will debut during the 2025 season. The new headphones are being built “from the ground up,” Sony Electronics’ Matthew Parnell tells The Verge in a briefing, and Sony engineers have already started working with NFL operations teams on the product.

Sony’s new headset for coaches will be a “brand new model,” Parnell says, and the company will have to make sure it can withstand many kinds of weather and still work in loud stadiums.” The headphones will also use private 5G networks from Verizon so that coaches can communicate with each other — current headphones use Verizon’s CBRS wireless connection.

It’s unclear to what extent the new coaches headphones will borrow from products like Sony’s WH-1000XM5 and the company’s well-regarded noise cancellation tech, as the new product doesn’t actually exist today and won’t exist “until we get further along in the development process over the course of the next nine to 12 months,” Parnell says. But he says that “it’s a collaboration to the nth-degree with the NFL team on what they want and what they need us to build.”

“We are known and recognized for our noise canceling, our sound quality, all the things that make our consumer headphones so amazing,” says Sony’s Maya Wasserman. “Bringing that technology and integrating it all the really specific needs that the NFL has for this headset is very exciting for us.”

We’ll have to wait and see if Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel will appreciate the new set or petition the league to switch back to Bose so he can hear his offensive coordinator and YG a little more clearly.

Sony will also be an official technology partner for the NFL, and as part of that, the NFL will expand its use of Sony’s Hawk-Eye tracking technology. Starting with this season’s preseason games, the NFL will test using Hawk-Eye to help measure progression toward first downs, says the NFL’s Tracie Rodburg. Hawk-Eye will be installed in all stadiums, Rodburg says. And in “coming seasons,” the Hawk-Eye team and the NFL will work together on developing a “next-generation officiating technology” that can review and make critical rulings on plays, according to a press release.