Before a single vote was cast this election cycle, the technocrats and oligarchs who own American sports had already voted. Pro sports owners put more than $100m into this cycle, according to Front Office Sports. But Tuesday night was a referendum not just on Donald Trump and Maga policies, but on the puppeteers who pull America’s strings.
The people voted, and the owners lost. Before anyone frames this as a rescue, a word about the rescuers. Democrats are the instrument for ending Maga, and they are also the other face of the same coin.
Think Republicans are behind all of our ills? New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, placed his state’s first legal sports bet in 2018. Illinois governor JB Pritzker signed sports betting into law a year later.
New York’s mobile sportsbooks went live under Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022, with the state taking 51% of the revenue. Pritzker and Hochul both won Tuesday, and all of them are Democrats. In some of the biggest betting markets in the country, the bookmakers’ most reliable partner has been a Democratic statehouse.
Having said all that, the biggest losers on Tuesday night were Republicans: Democrats flipped both chambers of Congress. That would have made plenty of sports owners disappointed, as they have a habit of backing Republicans. At least 10 sports owners backed Mike Rogers in Michigan, and Abdul El-Sayed beat Rogers.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones gave $1m to Trump’s super Pac and $250,000 to a committee backing Ken Paxton, and James Talarico beat Paxton in Texas. The former Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson lapped everyone with at least $67m to Republican committees, in keeping with her history of big spending around elections. What did she get for her money?
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