US pundit defends high salary for Wimbledon
BY NEIL McLEMAN JOHN McEnroe has hit back in a gender pay gap row by insisting he deserves every penny of the huge fee he gets from the BBC.
Fellow tennis star Martina Navratilova – who won the Wimbledon title nine times during an illustrious career – caused a storm by claiming she was paid 10 times less than him for their roles as pundits for the Beeb during the championships.
Navratilova, 61, said she got about £15,000 for her stint.
The latest figures showed McEnroe’s annual BBC pay was somewhere between £150,000 and £199,999.
His work for the Beeb is almost exclusively during the two-week tennis tournament.
US star McEnroe, 59, said: “It’s like if you work at... a paper and there’s a woman and man, you get paid based on the job that you do in the opinion of the paper. Right?
“And if the girl does the better job, she should get more money.”
After praising the BBC’s tennis host Sue Barker, the three-times winner of Wimbledon joked: “But don’t tell her because her head is already very big.”
Barker, 62, earns more than £300,000 at the corporation.
The BBC have been under fire after their 2017 annual report revealed massive pay gaps between their presenters, with their top seven highest earners all being men.