Hampden Park "Roar" as Loud as a Jet Engine in Celtic-Rangers Scottish Cup Semi-Final

Scotland’s national stadium, Hampden Park, registered sound levels as loud as a jet engine during the recent Scottish Cup semi-final between Old Firm rivals, Glasgow Celtic and Glasgow Rangers. Sound experts saw crowd noise peak at 115 decibels (dB) in the last-four clash between Scotland’s biggest football clubs. 115dB is the equivalent of a roar of a lion when standing less than a metre from it or being at the front row of a rock gig.

The infamous Hampden Park roar more than lived up to its name during this rather one-sided contest, which saw Celtic run out comfortable 4-0 winners over Graeme Murty’s Rangers. Sound experts Vanguardia were at the stadium throughout the game and recorded sound levels of 109dB as the teams came out of the tunnel. That’s compared with sound levels of just 84dB at Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium, suggesting that Hampden Park remains one of the most atmospheric stadiums in British football.

Matt McIlroy, senior acoustic consultant, Vanguardia, said that the incredible noise levels recorded demonstrated “the passion of the fans that those levels did not significantly change throughout the match”. McIlroy also noted that the sound levels were recorded at pitch level and he suggested that it would have registered even louder “in amongst the fans”.

According to the Guinness World Records, the loudest ever crowd noise officially recorded at a sports stadium was in the U.S. at the Arrowhead Stadium. In 2014, an NFL game between Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots registered 142.2dB, in front of 76,416 supporters. Considering that Hampden Park has a capacity of just 52,063, it’s incredibly impressive that the Celtic and Rangers supporters managed to come even close to the levels recorded at the Arrowhead Stadium.

It’s quite amazing that despite the number of times Celtic and Rangers play each other in the league throughout the season, the anticipation of each fixture never wanes. In fact, so high was the demand for tickets for this month’s cup semi-final that online casino and bookmaker Mr Green opened a competition to win a pair of tickets to the sold-out contest. All entrants needed to do was name the opposition Celtic were facing in the photo of their Twitter post.

On the pitch, Celtic took significant strides to making it back-to-back domestic trebles, booking their place in the Scottish Cup final against Motherwell with consummate ease. Rangers were timid throughout and had no response once Tom Rogic had fired Celtic in front on 22 minutes. Youngster, Callum McGregor doubled the Bhoys’ lead shortly before the interval and it got worse for Rangers early in the second half when Ross McCrorie received his marching orders for a last-man foul on Moussa Dembele; gifting Celtic a penalty in the process.

Dembele dusted himself down to extend the lead further for Brendan Rodgers’ men. Olivier Ntcham added further gloss to the scoreline in the closing stages with another penalty kick. Chance after chance went begging for Celtic also, with no doubt at all that Rangers could have been on the end of a severe hiding on another day. The game further severed to underline Celtic’s dominance in Scottish football once more, as Rangers struggle to return to the heights they achieved prior to their relegation to the Third Division in 2012.