The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit
Mark Walter's sale of the Lakers for a $12.5 billion valuation—after a year of doing nothing but facing fraud investigations—exposes the rotten core of billionaire sports ownership. American law shields leagues from antitrust, lets owners collude on revenue and labor, and subsidizes stadiums with billions in tax breaks, all while letting owners dodge taxes. This legal cartel turns already-rich billionaires into absurdly richer ones, and Derek Thompson argues the system is a public conspiracy that should be reformed.
What we have today is a handful of lucky, franchise-owning billionaires who get to sit at a poker table where every card they turn over has a face or an ace.