Sela's haptic Sound Shirt let deaf Newcastle fans feel the crowd's roar

In the UK, 12 million adults live with hearing loss, and for them the electric atmosphere of live football is largely inaccessible; traditional accessibility solutions leave many feeling excluded. Sela, the live-events company that sponsors Newcastle United, set out with the club, RNID and CuteCircuit to change that.

The Sela Sound Shirt, a world-first in sports, uses haptic technology to translate stadium sounds into real-time vibrations: embedded actuators turn the roar of the crowd and the energy of the game into something deaf and hard-of-hearing fans can feel. Research had shown that 71% of deaf fans believed technology could improve their matchday experience.

Unsilence the Crowd reached 5.08 billion people and lifted Sela's social traffic by over 520%. The shirt is committed for all future Newcastle home games, La Liga and Serie A have adopted it, and talks with other global rights-holders are ongoing.

Sponsor the experience deaf fans cannot hear, as a wearable

The innovation is the message, so the brand is remembered for what it gave fans, not for a logo.

It fixes a measurable exclusion - 71% of deaf fans wanted better matchday technology - so the story spreads by itself.

It operates every matchday as a product, not a one-off ad, compounding the sponsor's value.

Because Sela's business is live experiences, the shirt demonstrates exactly what it sells.

A sponsor can buy more attention with one innovation fans can feel than with a season of logo placements - especially when it fixes a real exclusion.

Unsilence the Crowd won the Brand Experience & Activation Grand Prix at Dubai Lynx 2025, a Gerety Silver, and multiple One Show awards. La Liga and Serie A adopted the Sela Sound Shirt, and Sela committed to providing it at all future Newcastle home games; the run logged 771 media outlets, more than 15,400 mentions and over 100 broadcast minutes.