Clare Balding will be a regular presence in people’s homes over the next fortnight as she spearheads the BBC’s Olympics coverage.
The much-loved presenter, fresh from hosting Wimbledon, has now made her way to Paris for the world’s greatest sporting spectacle. At 53, Balding has become a mainstay of the BBC’s sports coverage, presenting a variety of events over the years and covering every Olympics since Atlanta in 1996. She is also a regular on the Sports Personality of the Year show.
Outside of sport, Balding has also presented the Lord Mayor’s Show, Trooping the Colour and the dog show Crufts. She lives in Chiswick, west London with her journalist wife Alice Arnold, whom she married in 2015.
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Balding has an estimated net worth of £1million, largely due to her earnings from the BBC, which amounted to between £205,000 and £209,999 for the year 2022/23, according to the corporation’s annual highest-paid stars list.
Balding did not appear on the recently published 2023/24 list, which was once again topped by Match of the Day anchor Gary Lineker, whose salary remained steady at between £1,350,000 and £1,354,999. This marks the seventh consecutive year Lineker, who has an estimated net worth of around £30m, has topped the list and he remains the only star earning more than £1million.
If Balding’s earnings from the BBC have remained steady, she takes home over six times less than Lineker, who was the face of Euro 2024 coverage in Germany. With nearly three decades under her belt as a presenter, Balding cites the London 2012 Olympics as a pivotal moment in her career.
During a chat with ITV’s Lorraine Kelly, she reflected on that period: “It changed so many people’s lives. It changed my life, it changed everything. I look back to that summer of positivity and everyone being so excited about what the next event was.
“You’d be swinging from rowing to athletics to show jumping. Everyone was fixated on the glory of it. That’s why I get excited about it. It’s everybody together in that shared experience.”
In other news from the BBC pay list, Alan Shearer’s earnings were reported at £380,000, a drop from the previous year’s £445,000. Alex Scott saw a rise in her income, earning £220,000 compared to £185,000, for her roles in Football Focus, the Women’s Super League, the Women’s World Cup and Sports Personality of the Year.
