FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – There will be history made when the New England Revolution visit D.C. United on Sunday evening, and I’m not just talking about the Revs’ first-ever visit to Audi Field.
Sunday’s match will be televised nationally on FS1 (7:30 p.m.), and as first reported by Richard Deitsch for The Athletic, it will feature an all-female broadcast team of Lisa Byington (play-by-play), Danielle Slaton (analyst) and Katie Witham (sideline).
According to Deitsch, it will be the first-ever English-speaking national broadcast of men’s professional soccer in the United States to feature a broadcast team made up entirely of women.
While Byington has primarily called basketball and football – both as a play-by-play announcer and a sideline reporter – she also has plenty of experience in the soccer world. She’s called both college soccer and NWSL matches, and she was a collegiate soccer player at Northwestern University in the late 90s.
Slaton (a former defender with the U.S. Women’s National Team) and Witham, meanwhile, have previously featured on FS1’s MLS broadcasts, and they’ll both be quite familiar with Revolution head coach Brad Friedel, who spent time as a studio analyst with Fox before joining the Revs.
“That’s very cool,” Friedel said when he was told of the significance of Sunday’s broadcast. “I’ve worked with both Katie and Danielle many, many times. Really, really nice people. The whole Fox family, I enjoyed my time there.”
Friedel added that it’s an honor to be involved in such an historic event, but noted with a smile that he’d very much prefer if the broadcast team call a Revolution win to mark the occasion.
“It’s always nice to be a part of history if you can be,” Friedel said. “I hope they have a tremendous broadcast, and like always, I hope we get the three points.”
