The gender gap in football commentary is shown to be improving, but still has a long way to go according to new research from Cheekypunter.com.

While female pundits, commentators and presenters appeared 1428% more across live televised professional men’s football than they did five seasons ago, the differences in air time are still considerably in favour of their male counterparts.

Last season (2020/21) females gained 62,100 minutes of air time compared to 225,000 for males, a huge difference of 162,900.

During the campaign before in 2019/20, females had 25,560 on the air, whilst males racked up 118,080 and in 2018/19 it was 4,680 to 45,180.

It’s worth noting that the major jump in the number of appearances/ minutes over the last few seasons is due to the fact more football is now being televised because of the pandemic.

There is also the fact TV contracts for major channels like Sky and BT continually increase the number of televised games each season and new broadcasters, such as Amazon Prime are now showing games as well.

So despite female pundits, presenters and commentators’ air time increasing each year, it is mainly down to the fact there is more being shown, hence why the gap is getting closer year on year.

Of all the UK channels broadcasting live football, females made the most appearances on the BBC during the 5 season period from 2016/17 to 2020/21 with 569 times.

Again though, the gap was still massive with males eclipsing this figure by 402% with 2,857 during the same period.

BT Sport appeared to have the biggest gender gulf as males appeared 710% more than females during that time.