- Sony is sharing more details on its NFL coaching headset
- The Sony NFL Coach's Headset will make its debut for the 2025 NFL season
- This one won't be purchasable by consumers, but promises best-in-class ANC like the WH-1000XM6
Sony is the official technology partner of the NFL – the National Football League – and we know that the tech giant has been working on a headset for coaches and other officials. We even got a first look at it back in January at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Now, though, Sony’s NFL Coach’s Headset is official, comes in three styles, and will be making its debut ahead of the 2025 season. And when the season does kick off later this year, you can expect 32 teams to be using the headset.
Unlike the latest Sony WH-1000XM6 for Sony, the NFL Coach’s Headset is tailor-made for, well, what the name describes. It’s designed from the ground up to work for coaches in a game environment, and that starts with connectivity. It doesn’t have Bluetooth onboard, but plugs into a special connectivity box that taps into the private network, powered by Verizon, for the NFL and the teams.
There are also physical buttons or capacitive touch controls on the NFL Coach’s Headset. It also doesn’t have a rechargeable battery; rather, Sony is going old-school, possibly a quicker route than requiring a recharge by powering this headset with two AAA batteries. It’s also not carrying a specific IPX rating, but Sony did stress-test the unit for both extreme cold and extreme heat at NFL games.
This was done in environments where these weather conditions are recreated, as well as through live testing during NFL games this past season, including a frigid and snowy game at the Buffalo Bills' Highmark Stadium.
Sony’s past experience with various consumer headphones, including the WH-1000 series, will inform the design and other aspects, but it will likely focus on noise cancellation and pickup. It’s also not as straightforward as there are multiple design options for this headset, depending on the team and even individual preference.
Yes, it comes in a model with left and right earcups, but there are also two other options – just a left earcup and just a right earcup. All three, though, come with a microphone on a boom. Sony, however, is offering active noise cancellation on all three models.
Sony put this to the test in stadium environments where ambient crowd noise was measured at 100 decibels.
The resulting noise cancellation does, claims Sony, work effectively and has been tuned specifically for this use-case – here that means being able to hear communication while on the sidelines, but also for the microphone onboard using signal voice processing to pickup just the person speaking, and not the background chatter or even sound of the stadium.
Considering there are no buttons on the headphones, the microphone will automatically mute when the boom is raised. However, the belt pack, to which the headset will be plugged, will also have some manual controls.
Much of the focus here clearly went into making a durable headset that could withstand game after game use, though Sony confirmed with us that each team would have backups and that the overall feature set was purpose-crafted for each coaching staff.
Sony’s NFL Coach’s Headset will be worn during the 2025 season, which starts early September, but will make an early debut during the Hall of Fame game at the end of July. It, of course, does have some Sony branding front and center, after all, it’ll be shown on TV. I’m just curious if these will make it into a Beyond Sports simulcast – Homer rocking one could be neat.
As you might suspect with such a purpose-built product, there are no plans for a consumer release for the NFL Coach’s Headset. Those after a Sony headphone will need to consider the Sony WH-1000XM6, and you can read our full review here.
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