The Dichotomy of Male Sports and Female Announcing: Examining the Credibility of Gendered Pairs for NFL Announcing Teams

During a 2018 Amazon Prime simulcast alongside the Fox broadcast announced by Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer became the first all-female broadcast team for a National Football League game. Utilizing a national sample of 415 subjects, a four-cell post-test-only experimental design of the on-air commentary was utilized to examine perceptions of announcer credibility. Incorporating social identity theory, findings reveal women sportscasters were deemed credible, but if one affiliated with a presumed sporting out-group (female and non-White fans), this was not the case. Highly identified sport fans indicated a shift toward acceptance of all-female announcers of all-male sporting events.