The practice emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings preventing in-person attendance in the studio or venue.

[1][12] The professional wrestling promotion WWE introduced a closed studio known as the "ThunderDome", which featured a large-scale virtual audience displayed on multiple tiers of screens formed into a curved "grandstand".

The ThunderDome stage was used at multiple venues in Florida, and replaced a smaller-scale studio at its WWE Performance Center training facility in Orlando.

[13][14][15][16] WWE's third brand, NXT, moved from Full Sail University to the Performance Center in October 2020, adopting a new stage design that similarly incorporated a virtual audience, along with limited in-person attendees.

[20][21] The use of an audio-only virtual audience during the 74th British Academy Film Awards faced mixed reception; Deadline Hollywood noted that it "certainly added more atmosphere than BAFTA would’ve gotten from a silent Royal Albert Hall", but that some viewers and journalists questioned whether the show was actually using a canned laugh track and crowd noise.