Meet the man behind the voice of an insanely popular NFL video game and the Atlanta Braves. CNN’s Coy Wire goes one-on-one with Brandon Gaudin to find out what it’s like to provide the soundtrack for his childhood MLB team.
– Clipped From Video
Imagine having a front row seat for all of your favorite team’s games.
It sounds like the dream job for a lot of young sports fans around the world, but for the play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves, it’s a dream that came true.
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Brandon Gaudin lives and works down the street from CNN, so he is somewhat of a local here in Atlanta. However, his play calls, in both the real and virtual worlds, catapult his presence around the globe.
‘To say that it’s a thrill is an understatement’
As the only big league team in the southeast until MLB expansion brought baseball to Florida in the 1990s, the Braves were the proverbial only game in town for southern baseball fans for decades. With a radio network that stretched across the entire region – from Virginia to Mississippi and Florida to Kentucky – the Braves built one of the biggest fanbases in the sport.
But Gaudin was not a kid who grew up listening to the Braves on hot summer nights in Georgia or Tennessee, South Carolina or Alabama. Gaudin is a Midwesterner, raised in the Indiana town of Evansville.
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Even though his childhood was spent about halfway between Cincinnati and St. Louis, Gaudin didn’t root for the Reds or the Cardinals. Nor did he gravitate towards the uber-popular Chicago Cubs or the crosstown White Sox.
Instead, it was the accessibility of the Braves through cable television that brought the team into the Gaudins’ living room, where, as a youngster, he would reenact the games he saw on TV.
Under the ownership of Ted Turner, the Braves earned the nickname “America’s Team” because practically every one of Atlanta’s games was available coast-to-coast on Turner’s TBS network.
It was there on the “Superstation” that Gaudin developed his love of the Braves and his passion for broadcasting.
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“The Braves were on every night, and they got good in the 90s,” Gaudin recalls to CNN Sports. “And I started watching them every single game and just became a huge Braves fan.”
While many children would watch the ballgames and emulate their heroes on the field, Gaudin staged his own fictional games and mimicked his idols in the broadcasting booth – chief among them longtime Braves announcer Skip Caray, the son of legendary Cubs play-by-play man Harry Caray and father of Cardinals announcer Chip Caray.
Gaudin’s childhood dream of becoming a sports commentator led him to Butler University in Indianapolis, where he studied broadcasting and called games for the school’s sports teams.
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After Butler, Gaudin followed the same path as so many young men aspiring for a baseball career: He headed to the minor leagues, starting at the now-defunct single-A Orem Owlz in Utah.
As Gaudin worked his way through the broadcasting ranks, his journey brought him to the city of his beloved baseball team in 2013 as the football and basketball voice for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
His stellar work as the voice of the Ramblin’ Wreck led to the opportunity to jump to national broadcasts in 2016, calling NFL, MLB and college football games for Fox Sports as well as collegiate games for the Big Ten Network. Gaudin also continued his radio work with Westwood One.
His stint at Georgia Tech also led to another very unexpected opportunity to use his vocal talents – but more on that later.
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Moving to a larger stage gave Gaudin a chance to reach another career goal; the kid from basketball-crazed Indiana always dreamed of calling a buzzer-beater in March Madness, a dream he accomplished while announcing Michigan’s last-second win over Houston in 2018.
Gaudin tells CNN Sports that he always felt the only team-specific broadcasting role he’d be interested in was for the Braves, where he could achieve his early dream and follow in the footsteps of the idols of his youth.
The opportunity came in 2023, when there was an opening for the Braves’ television announcer position.
“I’m living in Atlanta and that play-by-play job opens up,” Gaudin said.
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“I thought, ‘Well, this is the time.’ It felt right. I was 38, and it felt like it was the right fit for my career.
“And I went in and interviewed and everything went great, and a couple weeks later, they offered me the gig.
“It was another one of those ‘pinch me’ moments that I now get to sit there every night and call the games for the team I grew up rooting for. It’s incredibly special, I feel honored to be able to do it.”
Gaudin shares with CNN that his debut in the Truist Park television booth at the Braves’ home opener in 2023 produced one of his favorite calls of his career, courtesy of an Orlando Arcia single and a play at the plate.
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“The first time I sat in that home booth, that chair that I had dreamed about sitting in all those years, and the Braves had a walk-off RBI single to win it,” Gaudin recollects.
“And I had always, kind of, had this fantasy of being able to have that call and then sit there and listen to the roar of the crowd, and I still get goosebumps thinking about it.
“I made the call, ‘The Braves win! They walk it off in the home opener!’ 40,000 on their feet going nuts, players are mobbing everybody. And I remember just sitting there and thinking, ‘How cool is this?’
“It’s something that I dreamed about, that I mimicked in my living room and foyer as a kid at seven, eight, nine years old, and then at 39 years old getting to live that out in real life was incredibly neat.”
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That voice sounds familiar…
Even if you’re not an avid viewer of Atlanta Braves baseball or a regular watcher of vintage Big Ten games, Gaudin’s voice might seem eerily familiar.
Since 2016, he’s also been a featured commentator for EA Sports’ insanely popular Madden NFL video game franchise, a best-selling title year after year that consistently rakes in over half a billion dollars annually.
To hear Gaudin tell it, he initially thought he might be the victim of a practical joke when he received a fateful LinkedIn message from the Madden game developers in 2015.
“Out of nowhere, I’m sitting in my office at (Georgia) Tech one day and I get this email from and it says it’s from the director of talent at EA Sports; it was actually through LinkedIn,” Gaudin recounts.
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“It said we want to talk to you about an opportunity. And I was at a decent spot in my career at the time, but I didn’t think I would be on the radar of EA Sports, so I thought ‘I’m getting punked, like what is this? This must be spam.’”
But Gaudin replied, expressing his interest, and then was hit with a strange request.
“Before we go further, we need you to sign an NDA – a non-disclosure agreement,” Gaudin remembers EA Sports writing.
“At that point, I’m thinking, ‘What did I do here? What’s going on? This is top secret!’”
A wary Gaudin signed the form and received a phone call that would change his life.
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EA Sports’ director of talent told him that the mega-franchise was looking for a new voice, and a producer for the game had recently heard him calling a game and thought his voice would work well for Madden NFL.
Gaudin was then offered a chance to audition for the job.
“At the time, I’m 30, I’m just trying to grow and establish my career, I grew up playing this video game, absolutely I’m going to audition,” he told himself.
He felt that the audition had gone well, but he also feared he may be up against some stiff competition.
“I didn’t think a whole lot of it because I knew they were probably bringing in guys with a whole lot more experience and much bigger names than I had,” Gaudin shared.
But two months later, he received the news he’d been waiting for.
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“The voice on the other end said, ‘Would you like to replace Jim Nantz and be the next voice on Madden?’
“You only get so many moments in your life where you will never forget everything about that moment – where you were, what it felt like, what it smelled like – and I couldn’t say yes fast enough. It was such an honor and something that just came out of nowhere.”
The partnership with Madden NFL has been a fruitful one for both Gaudin and EA Sports, and one that regularly gets the kid from Evansville recognized by rideshare drivers by voice alone.
“Here we are, gosh eight or nine years later, and it’s been a wonderful ride.”
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