Tennis champion says fellow pundit John McEnroe earns at least £150,000, while she is paid £15,000

Tennis champion Martina Navratilova has accused the BBC of valuing male voices more than female voices, after discovering that fellow Wimbledon pundit John McEnroe is paid at least 10 times more than her.



Navratilova, who was crowned Wimbledon ladies’ champion nine times, told Panorama she was paid about £15,000 by the BBC for her commentator role at Wimbledon while McEnroe earned between £150,000 and £199,999.

McEnroe’s pay packet was revealed in a list of the BBC’s top-paid talent last summer.

In an interview for Panorama: Britain’s Equal Pay Scandal, which airs on Monday, Navratilova said: “It was a shock because John McEnroe makes at least £150,000 ... I get about £15,000 for Wimbledon and unless John McEnroe’s doing a whole bunch of stuff outside of Wimbledon he’s getting at least 10 times as much money.”

Navratilova said she was told she was getting paid a comparable amount to men doing the same job as her, adding: “We were not told the truth, that’s for sure.”

“It’s still the good old boys’ network ... The bottom line is that male voices are valued more than women’s voices,” she said.

She added that that her agent would ask for more money in future.

BBC Sport defended the discrepancy, saying McEnroe’s role was of “a different scale, scope and time commitment”, to Navratilova, adding: “They are simply not comparable.”

A spokeswoman said: “Along with Sue Barker, John is regarded as the face of our Wimbledon coverage. He is a defining voice within the BBC’s coverage. He is widely considered to be the best expert/commentator in the sport, highly valued by our audiences and his contract means he cannot work for another UK broadcaster without our permission. His pay reflects all of this – gender isn’t a factor.”

Panorama said it estimated that McEnroe, who was crowned Wimbledon champion three times, appeared about 30 times for the BBC at Wimbledon last year, compared with Navratilova’s 10 appearances.

The gender pay row at the BBC erupted last summer when it published a list of its top-earning, on-air stars, which revealed that just a third were women and the top seven were men. This led to more than 40 of its highest-profile female presenters, including Clare Balding, Fiona Bruce and Emily Maitlis, to publicly call for change through a letter to the director general, Tony Hall.



The furore prompted the BBC to review its pay structure, with the corporation finding that men were being paid 9.3% more than women at the broadcaster on average and that nearly 500 employees may be getting paid less than colleagues in a similar role simply because of their gender.

Meanwhile, former China editor Carrie Gracie, who resigned from her role in protest at inequalities and now works for the BBC in London, told Panorama she could leave the corporation and former BBC news presenter Maxine Mawhinney said she was considering bringing a case against the broadcaster over pay.

Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, told Panorama: “We don’t think we have acted illegally in regard to equal pay. That doesn’t mean, however, there won’t be instances and cases where there is inequality and we need to address those.”