Sixers broadcaster Kate Scott to call women’s World Cup games for Fox

Sixers TV play-by-play broadcaster Kate Scott will call games for Fox at this summer’s women’s World Cup, the network announced Thursday.

“As somebody whose first love has been the sport of soccer since I was a little girl, I am over the moon about this opportunity,” Scott told The Inquirer. “It’s been a bucket-list thing for me ever since I started calling sports.”

Her history in the sport is long and deep, starting with her days as a youth player in Fresno, Calif. She and her club teammates had seats behind the goal at the Rose Bowl where the legendary 1999 women’s World Cup final penalty kick shootout took place.

“I wanted to play in it when I was a little girl,” Scott said. “That was my dream, to play in a World Cup. Because there were no professional sports leagues for women when I was playing soccer growing up, so the pinnacle was, ‘I’m going to win a World Cup for my country.’”

In time, she realized she might not have a future playing the sport. But she sure had a future in it, and it’s taken the now-40-year-old to a range of places.

While a college student at Cal-Berkeley in 2003, Scott was a San Jose Earthquakes cheerleader and was on the sideline for one of the great comebacks in Major League Soccer playoff history: San Jose’s 5-2 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy after L.A. won the series opener, 3-1.

» READ MORE: Another Fresno native, Lynn Williams, continues to make her case for an expanded role with the USWNT at the World Cup

“The stadium was rocking with ‘Earth! Quakes! cheers back and forth, and your girl started those cheers,” Scott said. “I was the yell leader at Cal at that time, so they were like, ‘Will you come down and work for us when you’re not in school?’ I was like, ‘Can you guys pay me enough to cover gas?’”

In 2009, Scott was the public address announcer for the Bay Area-based FC Gold Pride in the first year of Women’s Professional Soccer, the NWSL’s predecessor.

“Your girl was introducing Marta and Christine Sinclair and really annoying the neighbors because I got very into the intros.” Scott said of a team that also included Brandi Chastain, Formiga, and Tiffeny Milbrett.

She returned to Earthquakes games in 2013 to serve as a sideline reporter on local TV broadcasts for three years. In 2021, she started calling soccer games for Fox, including the Copa América, Concacaf Gold Cup, and other tournaments. This year, she joined the NWSL’s broadcast team for games on CBS Sports Network and Paramount+.

All this has come amid a long list of other jobs: sports talk radio in the Bay Area, the Sixers, the Olympics, minor league baseball, as well as college football, basketball, soccer, and more.

But a World Cup, for her, is as big as it gets.

“It just feels like this is my life’s work kind of all coming to fruition in one tournament this summer,” Scott said.

» READ MORE: Philly officials are excited for the U.S.-Mexico 2027 women’s World Cup bid, but it’s early

If you tune in not knowing that Scott went to Cal, the odds are good that you’ll find out. Though Scott won’t call any of Alex Morgan’s games with the United States, cohost New Zealand’s Betsy Hassett and Daisy Cleverley are fellow Golden Bears.

“You best believe that I will know every single one of them that is playing, regardless of what country they are representing,” Scott said. “And the same goes for, as I have realized since diving into the NWSL in the last month, there’s a whole lot of fantastic soccer players from the great state of Pennsylvania. So you best believe anybody that has a Pennsylvania or a Jersey — how far should we stretch it, a Delaware tie?”

Fortunately, Scott won’t have to stretch too far. The Republic of Ireland’s team is expected to include Sellersville’s Marissa Sheva and Havertown’s Sinead Farrelly, and they’re in a star-studded group with cohost Australia, Canada, and Nigeria.

The only bad news is that Scott won’t be traveling down under to call games. Instead, she’ll call them off monitors at Fox’s Los Angeles studios. And she only will call games in the group stage. Afterward, she’ll head to Seattle to do play-play for the Seahawks’ NFL preseason games on local TV.

» READ MORE: Briana Scurry is hosting a podcast series with Sinead Farrelly on her return to women’s soccer

“It does take some different things than calling a match live, because you don’t feel the energy of the crowd, [and] obviously, you can’t see everything that you would in person,” she said. “But I’ve been doing it for so long now that I know where to look on the monitors, I know how to replicate those things, I know how to ratchet up my own energy a bit so that people won’t be able to tell that I’m not there unless they know. So I’m extremely comfortable with it.”

Scott, who was hired by NBC Sports Philadelphia ahead of the 2021-22 season, called many Sixers games off monitors early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and is calling NWSL games off monitors this year.

“If Fox would have asked me to call this standing on one leg at the bottom of my pool, I would have said yes because it’s not often that the opportunity to call a World Cup comes across in anybody’s career,” she said. “I want to do whatever I can to support women’s sports and to get our incredible female athletes as much exposure as possible. So if this is the way to do it, I’m more than happy to do that.”

Fox will have five broadcast crews during the tournament, with three broadcast teams and a studio crew on site and two based in L.A. Former Union play-by-play voice JP Dellacamera will be Fox’s lead announcer for the third straight women’s World Cup with analyst Aly Wagner, marking his 17th career World Cup overall — 10 men’s and seven women’s. Other contributors with Philly ties include Lori Lindsey as a game analyst on-site and Carli Lloyd as a studio analyst at Fox’s set in Sydney.

» READ MORE: Telemundo’s increased women’s World Cup coverage is another sign of women’s soccer’s growth

Game crews: JP Dellacamera and Aly Wagner, Jacqui Oatley, and Lori Lindsey, John Strong and Kyndra de St. Aubin, Kate Scott and Danielle Slaton, Jenn Hildreth and Warren Barton (the first three crews will be on site)

Studio host: Rob Stone

Studio analysts: Kate Gill, Ariane Hingst, Stu Holden, Alexi Lalas, Carli Lloyd, Karina LeBlanc, Heather O’Reilly

Refereeing analysts: Mark Clattenburg, Dr. Joe Machnik

Betting analyst: Chris Fallica

Reporters: Jenny Taft (with the U.S. team), Tom Rinaldi (features)