Martina Navratilova Blasts BBC for Paying John McEnroe 10 Times Her Salary

Since Billie Jean King and the rest of the original nine broke off from the Lawn Tennis Association to form a women's tour because they were being paid a pittance of the prize money male players were awarded, tennis has been associated with pay parity. But 18-time Grand Slam singles champ Martina Navratilova discovered that the BBC was paying her 10 times less as a Wimbledon commentator than her male colleague, John McEnroe, and now she's speaking out about it.

"It was a shock because John McEnroe makes at least PS150,000 (about $210,000). I get about PS15,000 (about $21,000)," Navratilova said on the BBC show Panorama as part of a special entitled "Britain's Equal Pay Scandal." "Unless John McEnroe's doing a whole bunch of stuff outside of Wimbledon he's getting at least 10 times as much money than I am for very comparable work."

"I'm not happy, needless to say," she added.

Navratilova discovered the pay discrepancy in July 2017 when the BBC was compelled to reveal the wages of its top commentators. The forced transparency revealed that Britain's highest-paid male TV commentators or presenters were paid nearly double across the board what it paid the women.

Explaining that the Wimbledon gig is just part-time for her, Navratilova explained that she's concerned about the implications of the wage gap between her and tennis champ McEnroe and what that means for other women.

"If this happens to me then -- you know for me it's a part-time job, it's two weeks of my life... But for the women that work there full-time, maybe the discrepancy's not that large, but it adds up over a lifetime," Navratilova said. "It adds up to an amazing amount of money. It's extremely unfair and it makes me angry for the other women that I think go through this."

Despite the revelation that the BBC has paid men double or more what it paid women, the company said that there is zero gender bias. The company said the discrepancy was because Navratilova's role at Wimbledon was not the same as McEnroe's.

"John and Martina perform different roles in the team, and John's role is of a different scale, scope and time commitment," the BBC said in a statement, according to CNN. "He is contracted to be on call for the BBC across the entire tournament. ... Gender isn't a factor."

But even if it's true that their roles at Wimbledon were somewhat different, Navratilova said she didn't believe the difference was worth 10 times more pay.

Thanks in part to forced transparency, pay discrepancies are being exposed and called out -- at least in the entertainment industry. Last week it came to light that award-winning The Crown star Claire Foy made less than what her costar Matt Smith, who has a much smaller role on the Netflix show, was paid. During the rise of #MeToo last fall, Mark Wahlberg negotiated $1.5 million for reshoots for Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World after Kevin Spacey was expurgated from the film for serial sexual misconduct, while costar Michelle Williams opted to not take a payday and only took $80 per day per diem. After intense pressure, Wahlberg announced he would donate the money he made on reshoots to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.