GOP Fiscal Policies (Including Government Shutdown) Makes Imbalance Worse
Just in time for the tipoff of the new National Basketball Association (NBA) season and as fans face higher costs at league arenas and at home, a new study from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) reveals that the average NBA team owner is worth over $12 billion–which translates into an average annual income of almost $700 million. That’s about 7,000 times more than the average NBA fan, who earns around $100,000 a year. The Trump-GOP tax-and-spending law enacted last summer only exacerbates that huge inequity: all the owners are in the top 0.1% highest-income households that will on average get a $286,000 tax cut next year; while the fans are among the families that will suffer from the law’s cuts to public services. Democratic efforts to strengthen healthcare, one of the targets of the GOP cuts, led Republicans to shut down the government.
SOURCE: Alot Living
“As the NBA season tips off, the economic gap between fans and owners has never been wider, with GOP fiscal policies worsening the divide,” said David Kass, ATF’s executive director. “Fans face rising costs to watch live or even stream games from home, while skyrocketing healthcare, grocery, and energy prices due to billionaire-backed Trump policies. We must make billionaires—including NBA owners—pay their fair share while lowering costs for working families. That starts with renewing health insurance subsidies, which Republicans have refused to do, causing the government shutdown.”
Pouring It On: How GOP Policies Make Owner-Fan Economic Division Worse
As noted above, the collection of tax policies enacted this year by President Trump and Republicans in Congress will reward the top 0.1% of highest-income households (of which every NBA owner is certainly a member) with an average tax cut of over $286,000 next year alone. The lucky offspring of the NBA bosses can thank the GOP law for saving each family $6.4 million in estate tax, a tax cut that only benefits the nation’s 0.2% richest households.
Whatever the average fan might receive from the Trump tax cuts will be completely overwhelmed by price increases caused by Trump’s chaotic tariff program. The average NBA fan will come out over $600 poorer from the combined agendas. Tariff price hikes could well show up at NBA arenas, where a hot dog filled with Canadian pork subject to a 35% tariff could cost $2.33 more on average. An accompanying Modelo beer could run you an average $2.29 more thanks to Trump’s 25% tariff on Mexican imports.
Even though the right to broadcast NBA games is not subject to tariffs, the cost of watching your favorite teams at home is nonetheless skyrocketing. That’s because the billionaire owners have portioned out rights to so many traditional networks, cable channels and streaming services that fans have to subscribe to an expensive bundle of outlets to see the games. It’s estimated that to watch at home every game in the current season would cost almost $1,000. NBA commissioner Adam Silver–who works for the owners–reflected their “let them eat cake” attitude towards average Americans when he said if fans couldn’t afford to watch complete games, they could get by on free highlights.
Where the “B” in NBA Stands for Billionaire
Twenty-five of the NBA’s 30 teams are owned by an identified billionaire, billionaire family or billionaire partnership. The median ownership net worth among the 29 American-owned teams is over $12 billion. That’s 60,000 times more than the median U.S. household wealth in 2022 (the latest year with available data) of $192,700.
Though NBA players are famously well-paid, the tax treatment of the income players make through physical exertion in an 82-game season is radically different from the treatment of passive investment income enjoyed by the owners at courtside. Even the lowest-compensated NBA player pays a marginal income-tax rate of 37% on the top part of his million-dollar salary. But if an owner made the same million dollars from stock dividends or the profit from selling a winning investment, he would pay a top rate of only 20%.
Because income-tax records were leaked to ProPublica, we know about the tax savings enjoyed by some NBA owners. Between 2013-18, for example, Clippers’ owner and Microsoft co-founder Steve Ballmer paid an average effective tax rate of just 14.1% on income that averaged over $1 billion annually during that stretch. That’s a lower tax rate than the average American family paid in a recent year.
How We Can Make the Economic Game More Fair
President Biden proposed equalizing tax rates at higher incomes so that investment income was treated the same as work income. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has proposed reducing the estate-tax exemption and increasing the tax rate on huge family fortunes like those of NBA owners. The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden (OR), has a plan to annually tax the unrealized gains of billionaires. All these reforms would narrow the wealth and income divides between fans and owners, putting them on a more level economic playing field.
METHODOLOGY: Wealth estimates of NBA owners are published periodically. The income estimate is based on a recent examination of billionaires’ wealth versus income conducted by a team of eminent economists, including wealth expert Gabriel Zucman. Significantly, that income estimate does not include unrealized capital gains–the increase in value of assets not sold. At the wealth levels enjoyed by NBA owners, this form of income can be as good as money in the bank because investors can borrow against it at low interest rates and avoid paying taxes that would result from selling the underlying asset. A significant portion of each owner’s wealth is in the team itself and NBA teams appreciate in value quickly: the average appraised value of a league franchise jumped 20% between 2024 and 2025. Team ownership has become a more liquid (and therefore valuable) investment since the league approved selling minority stakes in franchises to private equity firms.