Several weeks ago, the owner of the San Francisco 49ers, Jed York, was arrested in a prostitution sting in Ohio. York was charged with engaging in prostitution and possession of criminal tools, both misdemeanors. One would think that York’s mind would be focusing on dealing with the fallout, both professionally and personally, of his arrest. But this is Jed York. This week, the San Francisco Gate wrote a story detailing how, prostitute or not, York continues to spend money on local elections in Santa Clara, California (the 49ers stadium is located in Santa Clara).
Recently, York created “two new political action committees” so that he could sway the public into electing a 49ers-friendly mayor and city councilmen. The team handed over $645,000 and $335,000 to the committees supporting the 49ers’ preferred candidates. Nobody should be surprised by this. York has spent millions on every election since 2014, the year that the 49ers’ stadium was built in Santa Clara. But it still surprises me how little attention York gets for his constant attempts to destroy any semblance of a democracy. Maybe you think I am exaggerating. Not even slightly.
Since York has involved himself in local elections and spent “astonishing amounts of money,” he has frequently financed and assisted numerous candidates who would go on to win their elections. Several years ago, the 49ers spent so much money trying and failing to get the mayor removed from office that a civil grand jury looked into their spending habits. The grand jury found that both the 49ers and several city council members had engaged in unethical behavior, lacked transparency in their decision-making, and ruled “as if the City Council owes a fiduciary duty to the 49ers as opposed to the City, which they were elected to lead.” But this grand jury didn’t stop York. Since the grand jury results were released, York has continued to spend many millions on every city election. In 2023, the team spent more than $13M so that “as many as five of the seven members of the Santa Clara City Council elected” would be friendly to the team.
Why do people call these politicians the 49ers five?
“San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York pumped $2.9 million into the 2019 city council race. As The Chronicle has reported, 49ers executives frequently hold closed-door meetings with five council members — as often as every five days during one eight-month period last year, city records show.” – San Francisco Chronicle, 02/24/22
However, once these 49ers-friendly politicians got into office, did they actually do anything to show a bias towards the 49ers? Let’s talk about city attorney Brian Doyle. He represented Santa Clara for years. However, Doyle frequently fought with the 49ers on financial issues related to stadium maintenance.
For example, in 2019, the city found evidence that the 49ers had “withheld $800,000 in sponsorship revenue that should’ve been split with Santa Clara.” It’s pretty funny reading story after story of the 49ers-elected politicians blasting the city and Doyle for spending so much on legal fees against the team. Yet, I don’t see these politicians outright stating the 49ers didn’t do what the city accused them of doing. Odd. Anyway, York wanted Doyle gone, so the 49ers spent $3M on the next election and got several candidates elected to the city council. Guess what happened next?
“Three Santa Clara City Council members, who were elected last year after 49ers Chief Executive Officer Jed York spent $2.9 million in that campaign, made a request Friday for a closed-door meeting to discuss firing an unidentified city employee (Brian Doyle)…One councilman said at a public meeting in April that team executives told him they wanted Doyle dismissed…A move to fire Doyle has been anticipated since April, when Jain, one of five members seen to favor the 49ers now on the council, disclosed he had privately discussed the city attorney with club executives, and they “would like to see Brian Doyle gone”…The other council members who favor the 49ers also have met privately with club executives and discussed stadium issues, city records show.” — San Francisco Chronicle, 10/1/21
After the 2022 elections, one of the first things that the newly elected city councilmembers did was settle a long-running lawsuit between the city and the team. A lawsuit that had a significant amount of solid evidence against the 49ers that was heading to court. Interestingly, after the lawsuit was settled, $750,000 was given to the three city council members who supported settling the lawsuit. How lucky! In 2024, the 49ers were arguing with the Santa Clara police chief. The city is one of the few that elects its chief rather than appoint him. Since he was not following orders from the 49ers, the team decided to try to change the law so that the city council could remove the police chief. As the San Francisco Gate wrote, the people who brought this new law into play were the “members of the city council faction called the 49ers Five.” The 49ers’ five would not succeed, and the law did not change.
Then there was the time that a city manager rightfully pointed out that the 49ers president, Al Guido, had broken several conflict of interest laws when he got involved in the city’s 2026 World Cup bid. You can go read about it here, but the city manager was correct. Guido was the 49ers team president, but he also was president of the company managing Levi’s Stadium, a taxpayer-owned entity. Therefore, when he signed agreements with FIFA, he was trying to act as if he could represent the public and the nonprofit parts of the deal. So how did the city council react? They fired the city manager. As the mayor stated in interviews with local media, the city manager was fired “because she had suggested, days before, that Niners President Al Guido had a conflict of interest in the World Cup bid.” Who called the meeting to fire the city manager? As the San Francisco Chronicle found out, it was the “four Santa Clara City Council members who regularly support the 49ers’ interests.”
But York isn’t the only one that gives and gives to local politicians in exchange for help with whatever the local team needs.
Last year, the owners of the Cleveland Browns, Dee and Jimmy Haslam, announced that they wanted to build a new $2.4B stadium in Brook Park. The Haslams have publicly admitted to wanting the public to pay for half of the stadium, therefore wanting $1.2B of taxpayer money. This angered most politicians in Cleveland who didn’t want the local NFL team to move out of downtown Cleveland. Therefore, the city filed a lawsuit against the Haslams to stop them from moving to Brook Park. This lawsuit was eventually dropped by the city after the Browns agreed to give the city an upfront cash payment of $25M, and the team promised to finance the destruction of the current stadium when it is not needed anymore. However, the Haslams still had issues getting $1.2B worth of taxpayer money from Brook Park or Cleveland. Then, last year, the state of Ohio decided to help finance the Browns’ new stadium by allowing the team to take $600M of taxpayer money from the state’s unclaimed funds. But to get this $600M, the Browns had to get several politicians on board to approve this transaction.
So, how did the Browns do it? How did they convince state politicians, including the governor of Ohio, to allow this large taxpayer giveaway? They gave bribes “big donations” to the very Ohio politicians that were deciding whether to allow this type of handout. The Ohio Capital Journal got their hands on documents showing the political donations by the Haslams over the previous 15 months. The Haslams gave the most money to Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman. Huffman has been adamant about slashing money from the state budget and admitting the state can’t afford to fund public education. Yet, after taking $61,000 from the Haslams, “Huffman has voiced support for the Brook Park stadium idea.”
In the year before the Haslams requested money for their new stadium, the Haslams gave more than $500,000 in Ohio to political action committees, of which $134,000 directly went toward state legislators with control over stadium funding. Keep in mind that this isn’t the first time that the Haslams demanded taxpayer money for their teams. The Haslams are also the owners of the MLS Columbus Crew. In 2018, $18M of taxpayer money went to the Haslams so they could upgrade the team’s stadium. To get this money, a state bill had to be passed that allowed for this money to be given to the Haslams. Well, what do you know… the Haslams gave $16,250 total to four sponsors or co-sponsors of the bill that granted that funding. How lucky can the Haslams get?
The Ohio Capital Journal spoke to a woman who I think was quite on point about this situation:
“It’s not hard to connect the dots…The legislators are considering cuts in education and services that impact our daily life. Campaign cash is the only reason our legislators would consider corporate welfare to the tune of $600 million” — Ohio Capital Journal, 04/05/25, Common Cause Ohio Executive Director Catherine Turcer
The list of examples of sports owners giving money to local politicians to get new venues built is endless:
- In 2011, the Miami Marlins owner, Jeffrey Loria, was threatening to leave Miami unless he got $400M from taxpayers (which ended up totaling $2.4B with interest) for a new ballpark. To get the deal done, Loria gave $40,000 to the county commission chairman and $50,000 to the mayor at the time. The city agreed to shell out $400M for a new ballpark. The donations were so poorly hidden that the Securities and Exchange Commission came to town to investigate whether these donations were actual bribes. Unsurprisingly, the case was dropped, and Loria got away with it.
- In 2015, the Milwaukee Bucks wanted a new arena. So, the state of Wisconsin considered a proposed bill that would help the team get taxpayer money for their new arena. In an unusual move, the governor, Scott Walker, became a staunch advocate for giving up to $400M of public money to the team. The state would eventually agree to give the taxpayers money to the Bucks. Afterward, we found out that a Bucks minority owner was working with Walker as his national finance co-chairman. Then, a political action committee connected to the minority owner “contributed $150,000 to the governor.”
- In 2022, the Tennessee Titans were trying and failing to convince taxpayers that a new stadium would benefit the community. Nevermind that taxpayers were being asked to fund a large part of it. So the Titans switched strategies on getting their new stadium built and “hired a deep roster of lobbyists to persuade lawmakers to raise taxes and fund its proposal with public dollars.”
- This week, the Buffalo Bills played their first game at their new stadium. This stadium cost taxpayers $850M to build. Some have called this the worst stadium deal in the history of sports. How did the Bills get the state of New York to hand over so much public money? Well, as one local media outlet noted, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, “used her influence to steer state tax dollars toward a new stadium.” Why would she do that? The Bills’ owners were “some of the biggest champions of (Hochul’s) re-election effort.” Campaign finance reports show the “big checks” written by the Bills for Hochul.
