The DWTS Pay Gap Is Old News. The Real Story Is That It Keeps Happening.
The most telling part of the Dancing with the Stars salary story isn't that Alfonso Ribeiro reportedly makes "significantly more" than Julianne Hough. It's that nobody in the industry seems surprised.
The Sun reported this week that the two co-hosts have very different paydays, a figure Yahoo and Cosmopolitan both picked up, with a show source describing Ribeiro's number as "significantly" higher. The exact dollars are floating around in those pieces, and they matter less than the structure: a man who joined the show later, in a co-host role, is earning more than a woman who has been part of the DWTS brand on and off since 2007.
If that sounds familiar, it's because Hollywood has run this exact play at least three times in the past decade. Each time, the same defenses were offered — experience, negotiation, market rate. Each time, the gap survived the explanation.
Case One: The Sony Hack and the Email That Changed Everything
In December 2014, the Sony Pictures hack dumped a trove of internal emails into public view. Among them were messages showing that Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than their male co-stars in American Hustle — a film where Lawrence, already a franchise star, was arguably the biggest name in the cast. Lawrence later wrote an essay for Lenny Letter saying she had been angry at herself, not the studio, asking why she hadn't pushed harder during negotiations.
The precedent matters for a simple reason: the gap wasn't a rumor leaked by an anonymous source. It was documented. And the defense from the industry was that Lawrence had "agreed" to her deal. That's the same logic now circulating around Hough. A performer agrees to a number, and the deal becomes proof that the number was fair. It isn't proof of anything except that the offer was the offer.
What happened next: Lawrence's public comments turned pay equity into a mainstream press topic for roughly two years. What didn't happen: a broad correction in unscripted and reality TV pay, which remains far less transparent than film.
Case Two: The Today Show and the Kelly File
In 2017, NBC's Today show briefly became the most-discussed pay story in America when reports surfaced that Megyn Kelly was earning a figure far above what her co-hosts were making after she moved from Fox News. The story was messier than a simple gender gap — Kelly had a star-power argument, and the numbers were attached to a specific hire — but the fallout was instructive. The network faced internal friction, the story leaked repeatedly, and within a year the arrangement was unwound, with Kelly departing in 2018.
Then came the counterexample. In 2018, after longtime Today anchor Hoda Kotb was named co-anchor alongside Savannah Guthrie, reports emerged that she was initially paid less than Guthrie — a gap explained partly by tenure, but one that drew immediate public pressure. Within months, NBC was reported to have adjusted Kotb's deal.
Read those two episodes together and the lesson is not that networks always underpay women. It's that the gap is usually explained by tenure, negotiation, or market — and it usually gets fixed only after someone writes it down in public. DWTS is now at that stage.
Case Three: The Voice and the Coaching Carousel
Reality TV has its own version of this story. In the mid-2010s, reporting around NBC's The Voice repeatedly put the show's male coaches — Blake Shelton, Adam Levine — at the top of the pay scale, with female coaches cycling through at lower reported figures, often on shorter contracts. The explanation offered by people close to the show was about episode counts and seasons committed. The effect was the same: the person most associated with the show's identity earned the most, and that person was a man.
DWTS has followed a nearly identical arc. Tom Bergeron anchored the show for 15 years. When he was replaced in 2020, the hosting structure changed to a two-host format with Tyra Banks, then shifted again to Ribeiro and Hough. Ribeiro joined in 2021; Hough was promoted to co-host in 2023 after years as a judge and pro. A show source told the outlets covering this week's story that Ribeiro commands more because he joined earlier and has a broader hosting résumé. That may be true. It's also the same sentence that has been written about every one of the cases above.
Why the "She Should Have Negotiated" Answer Fails
The standard defense in all three precedents was that the woman in question could have asked for more. Lawrence herself made that argument, then reconsidered it. The problem is structural: salaries in unscripted television are largely confidential, which means a performer negotiating doesn't know what the person in the next dressing room is making. Ribeiro, reportedly, is not just a co-host but a brand presence with a specific ABC relationship that predates DWTS. Hough's leverage is different — she's a dancer, choreographer, and judge who has been part of the franchise's identity for nearly two decades.
Neither of those facts is a scandal on its own. The scandal, if there is one, is that "significantly more" is still the default finding when a salary leak happens, and that the reporting treats it as gossip rather than as a data point in a pattern that goes back to a 2014 email dump.
What to Watch
Watch whether ABC or BBC Studios, which produces DWTS, responds on the record. Silence is the standard response, and silence is what allows the gap to reset quietly at the next contract. Watch whether Hough's team confirms or disputes the figure; her public posture will shape whether this becomes a two-week story or a two-year one.
And watch the next unscripted hosting announcement — not the salary, which you won't see, but the structure. If the next co-host pairing is again a man with a broader résumé and a woman promoted from within, the numbers will follow the same shape. That's not a prediction. It's a rerun.
Common questions
How much more does Alfonso Ribeiro reportedly make than Julianne Hough on DWTS?
Reports from The Sun, Yahoo, and Cosmopolitan describe Ribeiro's salary as 'significantly more' than Hough's, citing a show source. The exact figures vary by outlet and have not been confirmed on the record by ABC or the show's producers.
Is this the first time a DWTS salary gap has been reported?
No. Reporting around The Voice and other unscripted shows has repeatedly found male hosts and coaches at the top of the pay scale, often explained by tenure or episode commitments. The structure of this DWTS story matches those precedents.
What is the closest historical comparison?
The 2014 Sony hack, which revealed that Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than male co-stars in American Hustle, is the most documented precedent. Lawrence publicly addressed it, but the industry's broader pay structure in unscripted TV did not change.
Could Hough's lower salary be explained by her joining the co-host role later?
That is the explanation offered by a show source, and it may be accurate. But the same tenure-and-negotiation defense was offered in the Lawrence, Today show, and The Voice cases, and in each of those the gap only drew correction after it became public.