Aly Wagner has heard the critiques. When, in the course of calling a televised women’s soccer game, she points out that a defensive player is not marking the man in the box, inevitably a viewer will object, “But they’re not men.”

As a two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Cup bronze medalist with the U.S. Women’s National Team, Wagner is well aware of that fact – and she also knows how female soccer players actually talk during games. “It’s not sexist, it’s just quick. It’s functional,” she says.

Challenging assumptions is nothing new to Wagner. Since retiring as a player for the USWNT and the Los Angeles Sol, she has worked as an analyst for Fox Sports and ESPN, becoming the first woman to call a FIFA Men’s World Cup game on U.S. television. In an era when media coverage of women’s soccer still includes sexist gaffes (exhibit A: the 2018 Ballon D’Or awards) she is known for an ability to break down the technical aspects of the game and zero in on performances from players who often go unrecognized.

And while she is undoubtedly a barrier-breaking icon for women’s sports, Wagner believes that the greatest sign of real parity will be when gender is no longer a consideration. “I may be the odd one out on this, but I’m for ‘who’s the best person for the job,’” she says. “If it’s a woman, then so be it, but prove that you’re the best.”

Having said that, she also knows the importance of having female voices in media. “We see things differently in so many ways. You don’t want the same narrative being painted in every single game. Of course, there are experiences that I’ve had with the women’s national team that give me a greater understanding of what’s truly going on and what these women have gone through.”

The second act of Wagner’s soccer career started with a last-minute opportunity to be part of the 2015 Women’s World Cup. She had done some analysis for college games but had no aspirations to join the media. “I had no idea if I’d be any good,” she says. “I went out there and took a shot with it and really enjoyed it. I’ve embraced it ever since.”

Both as a player and while viewing games post-retirement, Wagner noticed gaps in the commentary. “When people would cover our games for the national team, the details weren’t being discussed,” she explains. “Someone would make an amazing pass and I’d think, ‘Why aren’t they talking about that? Why are they only talking about things that are at 30,000 feet when that one pass just opened up this whole play?’ It bothered me. My passion for the game is so deep and I love the layers and nuances of it. I wanted to share that with the audience.”

Once she began commentating, Wagner understood that it isn’t always possible to highlight the plays she wanted to due to the constraints of the format and flow of the game. Still, her goal is to bring a greater level of awareness to viewers. “I want to get down to the details that can either make or break a play or highlight a player who seemingly is innocuous but really, they’re doing amazing things,” she says.

Later she began calling men’s games, uncharted territory for a female analyst. Wagner expected criticism, but the viewers surprised her. “It hasn’t been a big issue,” she says. “It was literally one person that made completely silly remarks about me being a woman. Being in studios, you’re always going to have those negative voices on Twitter, but it’s been fine.”

Wagner and JP Dellacamera will be the lead broadcasters for Fox Sports coverage of the 2019 World Cup, which will include all 52 games aired live, an unprecedented level of coverage. Twenty-two will air on broadcast television and 27 on FS1. “The resources being poured into it are a big deal,” says Wagner. “There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to paint the picture and provide the graphics for the analysis.”

That investment needs to be highlighted and celebrated, she contends. “It takes brave people to recognize the value that is intrinsically here with women’s soccer and women athletes. It’s brave, but it’s also just good business. These are the people who will make the sport in America and worldwide, who are taking a chance to say, ‘We’re going to go against what has been the norm over the past 50 years.’”  

Executive Producer David Neal on Equity in Sports Media

From the beginning of his tenure at Fox Sports, David Neal had a clear directive about how to cover women’s soccer. After legendary former chairman David Hill and current President Eric Shanks hired Neal as Executive Producer of FIFA World Cup and Vice President of Production, they shared their vision for the upcoming 2015 Women’s World Cup.

“In the very first meeting we had after I’d come on board, they told me, ‘We don’t want you treating the Women’s World Cup like a laboratory for the men,’” Neal recalls. “‘We want the exact same full-throttle resources applied to the Women’s World Cup that will be applied to the men’s.’ There was complete equity, and that’s a real tribute to the leadership here.”

The approach worked. The 2015 tournament broke all viewing records, demolishing the tired but persistent argument that audiences are not interested in women’s sports. The final between the U.S. and Japan was the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history, attracting more than 25 million viewers.

To put that in perspective, the first time the USWNT team won a World Cup in 1991, American news outlets barely paid attention. The tournament itself bore no resemblance to the international spectacle surrounding the men’s game. In fact, FIFA wasn’t sure they wanted their brand associated with women, dubbing it the ‘1st FIFA World Championship for Women’s Football for the M&M’s Cup.’ The dubious logic behind this decision was based on the idea that the main sponsor, Mars, was the parent company for M&Ms. When the world champion U.S. team returned home, their plane was met by four people: two reporters, the coach of the U.S. Men’s National Team, and a friend of star midfielder Michelle Akers.

Twenty-eight years later, Neal and Fox Sports have been part of a fundamental shift in media coverage of women’s soccer, both through investment and the nature of the coverage itself. The sheer amount of money and resources Fox devoted to the 2015 World Cup was unprecedented and the overwhelming response has made even more possible as 2019 approached. “It was an emphatic validation of the fact that the women rightly needed to be covered and broadcast exactly the way we do the men,” says Neal. “The enormous success we had in terms of viewership gave us great momentum.”

Success is nothing new to Neal. In his 30 years at NBC prior to joining Fox in 2012, he produced nine Olympics, four NBA finals, two World Series and a Super Bowl pregame show. Along the way he earned 33 Sports Emmys and two Primetime Emmys and was recognized with a Peabody Award for NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in Beijing.

One of his first moves at Fox Sports was hiring a broadcast team with an ability to break down the game for an increasingly soccer-savvy audience. In previous years both fans and players had noted that commentators tended to focus more on backstory and less on analysis during women’s games. For 2015, Neal brought on several people known more for their work on the field than behind a mic, including former USWNT midfielder Aly Wagner.

Their coverage of the World Cup was critically acclaimed and Wagner in particular has become known for an ability to break down the technical aspects of the game and zero in on performances from players who often go unrecognized. She has since become the first woman to call a men’s World Cup game. According to Neal, Wagner exemplifies what he’s looking for in a commentator. “A litmus test that we apply is for our team to tell the audience ‘why, not what,’” Neal says. “Ally can explain why someone scored or turned the ball over, not the fact that it happened. You can see that for yourself. That’s what our best commentators do, regardless of the gender of the players on the field.”

Another change had to do with storytelling. In previous World Cups, reporters seemed to go out of their way to make players seem approachable and non-threatening. The term ‘girl next door’ was used so frequently by journalists that one columnist sarcastically wrote an article entitled ‘Reports: Girl Next Door a Dental Hygienist, Not a Member of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team.’

In contrast, Neal and his team focused on players as athletes. “Far from emphasizing some sort of perceived feminine qualities, this was about a world championship and we wanted to go at it full speed ahead,” he says. “There was no real variance from how we would cover men. That was the guidance I was given initially and consistently throughout, and it was the right way to go.”

That doesn’t mean storytelling went out the window, but the nature of it changed to reflect more about who players actually are than what might make viewers comfortable. “We had someone like Megan Rapinoe who was so open about her sexuality and her focus on being the best in the world at what she does, or like Carli Lloyd who is so driven that she would go out in the snow in the dead of winter in New Jersey and still work out,” says Neal. “People like that who open up to our profiles and features unit and allow us to tell their stories, that’s key to attracting and holding on to a significant television audience.”

With the U.S. men’s team failing to qualify for World Cup 2018, it’s an interesting time for U.S. Soccer, he believes. “The men’s program obviously needs to be overhauled. The women, on the other hand, are the reigning world champions. They’re the beacon of hope on the horizon.”

As the 2019 World Cup got closer, other countries have begun to invest more resources and coverage into their women’s teams. Neal hopes that approach becomes commonplace in the future. “I’d love to see women’s sports in general reflecting what we’ve been able to do with the Women’s World Cup,” he says. “Excellent athletes should be given appropriate coverage and it’s really not a question of men vs. women.”

Meanwhile, he’s been keeping a whiteboard in his office that tells him exactly how many days until the tournament kicks off. “You can be absolutely certain that as we build up for the Women’s World Cup, it will have exactly the same resonance and emphasis that any men’s event would have,” says Neal. “We’re looking forward to France.”