From Linda Cohn to Now: The State of Women in Sports Media in 2026
Linda Cohn retires from ESPN next week after 34 years. Her career changed what was possible for women in sports media. Here’s where things stand in 2026, and what it means for anyone building a career in the industry today.
“What I’m most proud of is that my career lasted long enough for me to see little girls grow up watching SportsCenter, enter this business, and succeed in it.”
Linda Cohn said that in her retirement statement this week. She is leaving ESPN on June 30 after 34 years, having anchored more than 5,500 editions of SportsCenter — the most by anyone in the network’s history Her final appearances are next Friday. She is 66 years old. She started as a radio reporter on Long Island in 1981.
That quote is not a gracious exit line. It’s a precise description of what meaningful progress in sports media actually looks like. Not one person breaking through, but a generation following behind because the path became visible.
This article uses Cohn’s retirement as the starting point for an honest assessment of where women in sports media stand in 2026. What has genuinely changed. What has not. What the most current data shows. And what it means for anyone building a career in this industry right now.
What Linda Cohn actually did — and why it mattered
Cohn began her broadcasting career in 1981 as a radio news anchor, writer, and sports reporter at WALK-AM/FM in Patchogue, New York. She became the first full-time female sports radio anchor in the United States when ABC hired her in 1987.
She joined ESPN in July 1992 and hosted her first SportsCenter edition at 2am on July 11 of that year. She was inducted into the National Sports Media Hall of Fame in 2017.
Those are the facts. The significance sits underneath them.
When Cohn became the first full-time female sports radio anchor in America in 1987, she wasn’t just taking a job. She was demonstrating that the job was available and that a woman could do it, sustain it, and build a career from it over decades.
That visibility matters more than any policy initiative or diversity programme, because it’s the thing that makes the next person believe the path is walkable. Former ESPN and Fox News anchor Britt McHenry said this week: “I was one of those girls, Linda. How lucky was I that I got to work alongside someone who inspired me every day.”
I entered sports media in an industry still overwhelmingly shaped by male voices and male assumptions about who belonged in it. The change I’ve seen across 15 years is real. It’s also incomplete, and it would be dishonest to describe it any other way.
The data: Where women in sports media stand in 2026
The picture in 2026 is measurably better than it was when Linda Cohn joined ESPN. It’s not yet where it should be.
On media coverage of women’s sport, the trend is clear and moving in the right direction. USC Annenberg reported that women’s sport coverage reached 15% in the US in 2024, a record at that point. Sport Ireland’s report published in March 2026 found that 18% of all sports coverage across print, television, radio, and online in Ireland in 2025 was about women’s sport — another record, with print reaching 21.4%.
The trajectory across markets is consistent: upward, year on year, from a base that was negligible a decade ago. Studio shows in the US still allocate less than 5% of airtime to women’s sport, according to Wasserman and ESPN Research, which illustrates that aggregate figures can obscure significant gaps in specific formats.
On women working in sports media rather than being covered by it, the data is patchier but the direction is also positive. The Olympic Broadcasting Services hired approximately 35 female commentators for Paris 2024, raising the proportion of female commentators to nearly 40% — a nearly 80% increase compared to Tokyo 2020 and over 200% from Rio 2016.
The Nielsen March 2026 report confirmed that American audiences consumed 46 billion minutes of women’s sport coverage in 2025, making it the most-watched year on record, which means the broadcast and digital infrastructure serving that audience is growing, and the roles within it are growing with it.
Leadership is where the picture is most sobering. A 2026 survey by the Sport Integrity Global Alliance found that women held just over 32% of executive positions across international sports federations. At the individual organisation level, the figures in most major broadcasters and publishers sit below that.
The gap between representation at entry level and representation in senior editorial and leadership roles is one of the most consistent findings in the research on women in sports media — and one of the least improved over time.
Women are entering the industry at roughly comparable rates to men in many markets. They are leaving it at significantly higher rates at the mid-career stage. The pipeline argument — that it is simply a matter of time before entry-level diversity translates into leadership representation — has been made for decades and has not fully materialised. The retention problem is where the industry has the most work to do.
The commentary and punditry gap remains one of the most visible persistent inequalities in sports broadcasting. The anchoring and presenting picture has improved substantially, with women now leading flagship coverage at most major UK and US broadcasters. The in-match commentary position, and the post-match punditry panel for men’s sport, remains disproportionately male across every major market.
The women’s sport media boom and what it’s created
The most significant structural development in sports media over the past five years , for women specifically, has been the explosion of women’s sport coverage and the career opportunities that have followed it.
In 2026, the WNBA’s 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal with Disney, Amazon, and NBCUniversal is now active — the largest media rights deal in the history of women’s sport. The 2025 WNBA season delivered ESPN’s most-watched regular season and postseason ever, averaging 1.3 million viewers per game.
The 2025 NWSL Championship on CBS became the first in league history to surpass one million viewers, averaging 1.18 million and peaking at 1.55 million — a 70% rise in viewers aged 18 to 34. Total NWSL viewership across all platforms in 2025 reached 20.16 million, an 18% year-on-year gain.
The 2026 Milan Winter Olympics women’s hockey gold medal game set a new viewership record, averaging 5.3 million and peaking at 7.7 million. And 2026 marks the first year in LPGA Tour history that every event and every round will be broadcast live nationally across the US.
Each of those broadcast milestones is also a staffing decision. Every new rights deal requires producers, presenters, journalists, communications professionals, social media managers, and data analysts to serve a larger audience across more platforms.
Forbes’ 2025 list contained no women among the 50 highest-paid athletes in the world — which makes the commercial distance still to travel visible in a single data point. But the media infrastructure around women’s sport is expanding faster than at any previous point, and the jobs within it are real and growing.
My honest view on this: the women’s sport media boom is significant and the career opportunities it has created are genuine. But more coverage of women’s sport does not automatically mean more women in sports media leadership. The two things are related but not identical.
Progress on one should not be used to obscure the absence of progress on the other. The best version of this story has both moving forward together. At the moment, the coverage side is moving considerably faster than the leadership side.
The obstacles that still remain
The barriers that persist in 2026 are specific enough to name directly.
Online abuse
The FIA’s United Against Online Abuse Sports Journalist Barometer, published in December 2024 and supported by the Sports Journalists’ Association, found that 85% of sports journalists believe online abuse is so severe it threatens freedom of the press. Female journalists highlighted a unique and pervasive form of abuse including misogyny, with many withdrawing from social media entirely as a result.
Research published in 2024 found that sex discrimination and harassment are driving some younger women away from sports journalism entirely, contributing to the industry remaining male-dominated. This is not a peripheral issue. It is a documented, active deterrent to women entering and remaining in sports media, and it is getting worse rather than better.
The retention gap
Women entering sports media are leaving it at the mid-career stage at higher rates than their male counterparts. The reasons cited consistently in the research are harassment, pay inequality, a lack of senior female role models, and structural inflexibility around working hours and career breaks.
Entry-level diversity without equivalent focus on mid-career retention and senior promotion is the structural failure the industry has been slowest to address.
The commentary and punditry ceiling
The gap is most visible in live match commentary and post-match punditry for men’s sport. It is the most prominent remaining inequality in sports broadcasting, the one audiences see most directly, and the one that moves most slowly.
The Sport Integrity Global Alliance’s 2026 finding that women hold just over 32% of executive positions across international sports federations reflects the same dynamic at the governance level — better than it was, still far short of representative.
The access problem
Formal policies around equal access for female journalists at major sporting events have improved in most major markets. The gap between policy and practice — in informal source-building, post-match environments, and the social structures through which contacts and trust are developed in sports journalism — is harder to measure and harder to close.
What it means for anyone building a sports media career
For women building sports media careers: the landscape in 2026 is meaningfully better than it was when Linda Cohn started. The role models are more numerous, the data supporting the commercial value of women’s sport is more compelling than it has ever been, and the growth in women’s sport coverage has created genuine new entry points that simply did not exist a decade ago.
The specific advice I would give: build in the areas of genuine current growth. Women’s sport coverage, digital and social media, content creation, and communications roles around women’s sport are all areas where demand is outpacing supply right now.
The traditional broadcast and print routes are worth pursuing, but the fastest-moving opportunities are in the digital and social spaces that are already open rather than the institutional structures that are still adjusting to the new landscape.
On the reality of online abuse: it’s worth knowing about before you enter the industry rather than being blindsided by it after. The organisations worth finding early — Women in Sport, the Sports Journalists’ Association’s women’s network, Women in Journalism — provide the kind of community and practical support that makes early careers significantly more manageable. The research on online abuse is consistent about one thing: the women who stay in this industry through it do so with support around them, not alone.
For everyone building sports media careers: the most important observation I’ve made across 15 years is that the organisations producing the best journalism, the strongest broadcasting, and the most engaging content are consistently the most genuinely diverse ones.
The breadth of perspective, experience, and audience empathy that comes from a team that reflects the people it is serving produces better work across every format. That is not a moral argument, though it is also that. It is a professional one.
Sports media gets closer to the sport it covers when it looks more like the people watching it.
Linda Cohn’s real legacy
The most important thing Linda Cohn did wasn’t the 5,500 SportsCenter editions, the Hall of Fame induction, or the ESPN record that will stand until someone dedicates 34 years to matching it.
It was the thing she said herself. The career that lasted long enough for little girls to grow up watching, enter the business, and succeed in it. The achievement she said she would cherish most.
Visibility is infrastructure. The person who goes first makes the path visible for the people who follow. That is what 34 years at ESPN represents, not just a career, but a generation of women who entered sports media because they could see it was possible.
The work is not done. But the path is more visible than it has ever been. That matters, and so does everyone who chooses to walk it.
