Broadcaster and former England striker Eni Aluko has warned that male pundits risk crowding out women from opportunities in the rapidly growing world of women’s football broadcasting.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Aluko, 38, referenced veteran pundit and Arsenal legend Ian Wright as someone who should be conscious of his presence in the space, given the limited number of available roles.
“I’ve worked with Ian a long time and, you know, I think he’s a brilliant broadcaster, but I think he’s aware of just how much he’s doing in the women’s game. I think he should be aware of that,” said Aluko.
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Wright has become a vocal advocate for women’s football and regularly appears as a pundit covering the Lionesses. But Aluko said the ecosystem remains constrained.
“The fact of the matter is, there is a limited amount of spaces available. If we had a situation where there was an equal opportunity in the men’s game for broadcasters and coaches that there is in the women’s game, it’s a free for all.
“But that’s not the case. I can’t dominate the men’s game in the way that, you know, you used Ian as an example.”
Asked if she thought it was wrong for Wright to cover the women’s game, she said: “I don’t know about wrong, but I think we need to be conscious and we need to make sure that women are not being blocked from having a pathway into broadcasting in the women’s game.
“It’s still new, it’s still growing. There’s a finite amount of opportunities and I think that men need to be aware of that.”
Aluko also said her own broadcasting work has been affected by her ongoing legal dispute with former footballer Joey Barton. She recently won the first stage of a High Court libel claim arising from a series of posts Barton made on social media in January 2024.
She said: “This happens in lots of industries – when women stand up for themselves, their career takes a hit.
“I’ve been doing broadcasting for 11 years. I’m not new to it. And in the last 18 months I’ve done the least TV I’ve ever done.
“That’s just a fact. That’s not a feeling, that’s an opinion. That’s a fact. So I think people can draw their own conclusions from that.”
Aluko said opportunities for female broadcasters remain limited in both the men’s and women’s games: “We’re still competing for two or three seats maximum, which includes the presenters.
“What the Joey Bartons, and some male football fans, want is for women to get off the TV.”
She described the personal impact of Barton’s comments online, telling the programme: “There’s 45 tweets that Joey Barton has tweeted about me.
“And what that does is it impacts you in real life, where it just feels like a wave of abuse and it feels like you’re in a fishbowl. And it means that I’m more self-conscious.
“I don’t feel that I can just go out and be free to do what I do. For the first week I was disguising myself and some people think that’s over the top, but that’s genuinely the impact it had on me.”
