Sports are coming for your healthcare
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a disaster thanks in part to team owners
Congress is poised to pass President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Republicans are so sycophantic, and so afraid of Trump’s wrath, that they ignored basic grammar and naming conventions to deem something a “Bill Act.”
Republicans are also so evil and shortsighted that they, through the Bill Act, are going to gut the clean energy industry, driving up utility costs for consumers and impacting jobs and businesses in their own states; kick millions off of health insurance and food assistance; and add trillions to the deficit.
Our favorite sports team helped make this happen.
As the Guardian reported last November, “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.”
The money we pay as fans to the leagues and teams we love (and the subsidies we indirectly give them as taxpayers) is then used to support candidates and elected officials that make our lives worse.
Some examples:
The Dallas Mavericks are basically a political money laundering scheme for Miriam Adelson, one of the GOP’s richest, most active donors.
Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, a team that represents one of the most diverse and progressive cities in the country, donated millions to conservative PACs and candidates. (Watch out, Crystal Palace!)
MLB owners form the Freedom Caucus of the donor class.
Charles Johnson, owner of the San Francisco Giants, and the Ricketts family, owners of the Chicago Cubs, lead the conservative charge in baseball. It comes literally at our expense:
MLB owns a legal monopoly. The league’s antitrust exemption gives them legal authority to suppress competition in professional baseball, which gives them the ability to raise prices for tickets, merchandise, and TV access with little recourse. It’s not a coincidence that, since 2012, gross league revenues increased 15.2%, to $12.1 billion, after accounting for inflation. And they tell us to be happy with a 7% return on the S&P 500. (The league’s monopoly also allows the owners to create an artificial scarcity of baseball, which drives up the value of their franchises.)
Team owners get preferential tax treatment. Federal law allows team owners to deduct many expenses, including the players themselves, from their tax bills. The House of Representative’s version of the Bill Act phases this deduction out, but after intense lobbying by team owners—by the people who cut million dollar political checks—the Senate seems poised to preserve the deduction.
Teams receive taxpayer subsidies. Taxpayers regularly pay for ballpark construction and renovations. That is not new or secret. But teams nickel and dime taxpayers for everything all the time. The Ricketts-owned Cubs recently received $22 million in taxpayer funds for enhancements around Wrigley Field. Oracle Park, home to Charles Johnson’s Giants, got $90 million in tax abatements and surrounding infrastructure enhancements.
This calls to mind the boiling frog. As oligarchy becomes more entrenched and more shameless—to win Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s support, the Senate’s version of the Bill Act exempts Alaska from many of the bill’s more retrograde policies—we sit in a pot of gradually rising temperatures.
Except in this case, billionaires are holding our hand to the knob. See, it’s not them turning up the flame! The GOP have adopted a phrase and it’s the rhetorical representation of the metaphor: “This is what people voted for.”
I paid MLB $150 this year to stream its game. I engage with countless of the league’s and teams’ social posts, which they can then use to beam ads into my eyeballs. I’ve bought tickets to seven games this year, buying $16 Bud Lights at all of them. That fandom, that financial support, is being used to take healthcare and food away from my people. I did not vote for that.
MLB hasn't received a penny from me for many years and I proudly pirate all baseball streams. These evil bastards can burn in hell.
And Ricketts and Cruz even look alike! Your expose makes clear that the only real socialism in America is Republican socialism. When you’re elected president please socialize the ball clubs and set ticket prices at free for all children 12 and under.