David Dayen

The 2022 campaign saw AIPAC’s first major investments in partisan primaries. The crypto industry also dabbled in races in 2022, but that exploded in 2024. Its major PAC spent big money in 48 races; their candidate won 47. The crypto PAC Fairshake has raised a record $193 million for the election campaign; AIPAC has a war chest of $95 million. Meta recently dropped $65 million into an account that will spend on state-level races in California. Even gambling apps FanDuel and DraftKings have given millions to a newly created super PAC called Win for America. The idea is that these industries can get massive returns by buying government outright. And it often works. The crypto industry was able to get legislation called the GENIUS Act through Congress that could translate into billions of dollars in gains for them, dwarfing the industry’s relatively modest investment in politics. “We’re living through a period where politics has become explicitly transactional,” Weiner said. “An industry all about not being controlled by the government is trying to get subsidized by it.” Another new entry this year is an AI-focused PAC that has raised $125 million to date, a pittance compared to the hundreds of billions being spent on AI infrastructure like data centers, but a ton of money for campaigns. The donors, leadership, and approach of the AI industry’s primary PAC Leading the Future bears a striking resemblance to Fairshake. Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto are running Leading the Future; Vlasto is also lead spokesperson for Fairshake. Donors like the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have given heavily to both PACs. And both are following the AIPAC strategy of attack ads on unrelated subjects to take down its foes.

The sheer numbers being accumulated for elections this year would have shocked everyone just four years ago. Just within these paragraphs is nearly half a billion dollars.
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Big Money Is Back - The American Prospect The 2026 primaries will likely see even bigger levels of corporate and issue-based PAC spending. But there may be diminishing returns on these investments.

A special election primary tomorrow for Mikie Sherrill's old seat in Congress has drawn AIPAC's first spending of 2026—against a candidate they once supported. It may end up boosting the main progressive in the race.
The shifting, possibly diminishing role of big money in primaries, from me:

Sports - The American Prospect

You can see all stories in the series as they are released at prospect.org/sports.

The Scourge of Online Sports Betting - The American Prospect States and leagues must face up to the damage from app-based gambling for the next generation of bettors, most of them young men.

There's more, including FanDuel and DraftKings' surveillance-based dominance, the rise of prediction markets that seek to avoid regulatory restrictions, and the emerging movement to ban the apps in the states.
Great piece.
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With betting available throughout games, scandals followed, and baseball’s latest is in court. Two Cleveland Guardians pitchers, Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase, have been charged with allegedly conspiring with bettors who made prop bets on the speed and outcome of pitches they threw. The Justice Department’s indictment asserts that the two men “betrayed America’s pastime.” Convictions could land them in prison for up to 20 years. Basketball is all fouled up. This past October, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player Damon Jones were arrested, in part for leaking nonpublic information about injuries to players like LeBron James and Anthony Davis, which gamblers can bet on. Rozier also left a game early so his conspirators could win the “under” on his stats; similar activity got the Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter banned for life in 2024. Several college basketball players have also been arrested and banned for point-shaving. Harms to the game don’t end with gambling players. Last year, two MLB players and their families received death threats, one from an inebriated bettor angry about losing his bet. Teams have had to boost security measures at games. Players say sports betting is the source of the online abuse; nearly half of all NBA players surveyed last year said gambling partnerships hurt the sport.

Pro leagues are as beholden to sports betting as the players who increasingly find themselves involved in betting scandals.
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Few parents consider that their children could be spending money and time on sports betting. But Tony Cattani has been thinking about it quite a bit. For nearly 20 of his 30 years in education, he has been the principal of Lenape High School, which serves students in Mount Laurel Township, New Jersey. Last July, he was named the 2025-2026 National High School Principal of the Year. Cattani often hears teenagers talking about point spreads, individual players, over/unders, and prop bets during informal classroom conversations and at lunch. “Kids talk about how they were betting on this one player,” Cattani says. “He made this shot, but it was after the buzzer.” Otherwise, he would have won $50. “You hear kids talking about this at 15 to 17 years old.” These bets should be illegal. Sports betting apps ban wagers from anyone under the age of 18. But that can be difficult to enforce since many young people can find their way around parental controls and may have bank accounts or credit cards in their names. Cattani believes that sports betting has the potential to become as big a problem for schools as cellphones, which were banned statewide this year. Adolescents’ brains are not fully developed, so they struggle with constructive decision-making, don’t necessarily understand the consequences of their actions, and focus instead on the perceived reward, he says. “They’re just manipulating it on some account like it’s a video game.”

@gurleygg.bsky.social talked to state legislators trying to ban gambling apps, analysts who found that in-game prop bets (which mostly lose) are now the majority of all wagers, and the national Principal of the Year, who's struggling to deal with gambling in school.
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The Scourge of Online Sports Betting - The American Prospect States and leagues must face up to the damage from app-based gambling for the next generation of bettors, most of them young men.

The next topic in our sports issue is gambling, the 2nd-highest service-sector industry for GDP growth between 2019 and 2024(!). It has taken over games, leagues, state treasuries, and of course the mostly male bettors, who trend young. Really young. Middle school young.
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I'm enjoying James Harden being someone else's problem

Great point

This is a great read. Something that’s not mentioned but is relevant are the two biggest US motorsports leagues: NASCAR has the multi-platform streaming/cable model and it’s a mess. IndyCar, on the other hand, is on basic FOX for every race. The numbers don’t lie: IC viewer numbers are 🆙

Not In Their League - The American Prospect Why it’s harder to be a sports fan

Enjoyed this article, and have long believed more politicians should use Sports as a conduit to the idea that everyone is getting ripped off all the time by unlikable, insatiable billionaires. It's high-visibility, easy to understand, and even conservatives hate it prospect.org/2026/02/03/f...

there is that

Not In Their League - The American Prospect Why it’s harder to be a sports fan

this is a must-read for any sports fan. big ups to @ddayen.bsky.social for writing this piece. (also, go blue!)
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That's not petty, you were right!

um I'm being sarcastic

sorry sometimes my wit is a little dry

Not In Their League - The American Prospect Why it’s harder to be a sports fan

"In 1960, an NFL Championship Game ticket ran you $8; adjusted for inflation, that’s about $87.60. Last year, the cheapest seat for the Super Bowl ... was $3,000." prospect.org/2026/02/03/f...

body cameras solve this

“Imagine if we had to follow the law”

Good catch, that reference was true as of 2023 but yes obviously they aren't around anymore and I should have fixed it. The Suns are still on free TV, though.
I will fix!

Sports - The American Prospect

You can see our entire series on The Business of Sports at
prospect.org/sports. More to come in the days ahead!

We have some pieces about public ownership (not just GB) coming later in the series.

Surprise! They managed to fit commercials into the matches with 3-minute "hydration breaks" in each half.

Come back tomorrow for plenty on that.

This is a very good read. And as one of the last 10 boxing fans on earth (who still didn't fork over $$ for PPV this past weekend), the last few paragraphs are a warning.

Another one that’s absolutely worth reading the entire piece!

And, despite being a lifelong sports fan, this part still managed to catch me very off guard (though it absolutely makes sense in the context of ever-increasing wealth aggregation).

Nurses Hold the Line for Workplace Safety - The American Prospect In New York, nurses mark the fourth week of their strike with a march on Gov. Kathy Hochul. A West Coast strike is in its second week.

There are two giant nurses strikes going on simultaneously: 15,000 in NYC, and 31,000 in LA and other parts of California and Hawaii. The priorities are the same: staffing levels that are safe for workers and patients. Great story from @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social.
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Red Card - The American Prospect World Cup ticket prices are not fair play.

We also have a short sidebar on World Cup pricing, where some tickets have topped $80,000, everything's priced dynamically, and FIFA is taking a cut of all resales.
From @lindsayowens.bsky.social and Nia Law.
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This piece articulates a feeling I have long had. Every year it gets harder to enjoy sports when I increasingly feel like a mark being taken for every possible dollar at every possible point in the experience.

The Prospect continues leaving no corner of society unexamined!

There are plenty of reasons to not love boxing, but it was undeniably the #1 sport in America until nobody could get in to see it or watch it without a bankroll.