Sports team owners in the major North American leagues have donated at least $132.1m in federal elections since 2020, with nearly 95% of those contributions going to Republican campaigns, candidates and Super Pacs, according to research conducted by the Guardian.
Nearly all of the owners of the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, NWSL and WNBA franchises were active political donors in the election cycles since 2020. A minimum of $124,806,435 (94.5%) was designated for candidates or committees with Republican leanings, while at least $5,215,693 (3.9%) went toward Democratic causes, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures and data compiled by the nonprofit OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance spending. About 2% of contributions went to bipartisan or unaffiliated recipients.
The Guardian reviewed all of the federal campaign contributions made by teams’ principal owners and/or managing partners from 4 November 2020 through 16 October 2024, the final FEC filing deadline before Tuesday’s elections. The figures are presumed to be a fraction of the actual contributions since sports team owners, like many billionaires and millionaires, have multiple ways to conceal their political spending.
Individuals are limited to donating $3,300 to a single candidate – once each in the candidate’s primary and general election campaigns – but can contribute unlimited amounts to political action committees.
More than two-thirds of the total contributions made by team owners – $92,275,100 in all – come from Republican mega-donor Miriam Adelson, who purchased a majority stake of the Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban in late 2023. Adelson, a Nevada physician who specializes in substance addiction, has poured at least $20m into her Preserve America political action committee backing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with tens of millions more into down-ballot races across the country.
Overall, NFL owners were the most prolific givers, making $23,248,536 in contributions since the last US presidential election in November 2020. They were also generally the most conservative, with $19,098,310 funnelled toward Republican efforts compared to $2,347,326 for Democratic causes. An additional $1,802,900 went to bipartisan committees, most notably Gridiron-Pac, the NFL’s political action committee formed in 2008 as congressional scrutiny and public pressure over the league’s labor negotiation and treatment of head injuries began to increase.
Football’s most generous donor was Denver Broncos co-owner and Walmart heir Rob Walton, whose family purchased the Denver Broncos for $4.65bn in 2022. He donated at least $13.8m to conservative groups and campaigns. The biggest of these were two separate contributions of $5m and $2m to Americans for Prosperity, a conservative/libertarian Super Pac founded by Charles and David Koch that backed Nikki Haley for president in 2023 and has focused its efforts since then on promoting conservative down-ballot candidates.
Other NFL owners to surpass the seven-figure mark in contributions include David Tepper of the Carolina Panthers ($3.33m), Arthur Blank of the Atlanta Falcons ($2.74m) and Woody Johnson of the New York Jets ($1.45m), the Johnson & Johnson billionaire who previously served a three-year stint as the Donald Trump-selected US ambassador to the UK.
A relatively small group of donors account for more than 80% of the overall contributions: with Adelson, Walton, Tepper, Blank and Johnson, along with Bill Foley of the Vegas Golden Knights, Ray Davis of the Texas Rangers, Charles Johnson of the San Francisco Giants, combining for $105,958,000 in donations over the past four years. Of those eight mega-donors, all except Blank donated predominantly to Republican causes.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
