Sports betting has grown from a niche, mostly illegal activity into a national industry in under a decade, and its political spending now reflects that. According to campaign finance data reported by Reuters, sportsbooks and their allies have spent at least $72 million to influence the 2026 midterm elections, which the consumer watchdog Public Citizen says makes the industry the third-largest corporate election spender this cycle, behind only crypto and technology. The details here are drawn from Reuters, Public Citizen's report, and NBC News.
Most of that money flows through a super PAC called Win for America, launched last year and backed by the biggest names in the business. DraftKings has contributed at least $34 million, FanDuel at least $27 million, and Fanatics and the UK-based bet365 roughly $5.5 million each. Under US campaign finance law, super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums to advocate for or against candidates, but cannot donate directly to them or coordinate with their campaigns, a framework opened by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision.
A bet on both parties
One detail cuts against a simple partisan story: Win for America funds two affiliated PACs that back opposite sides. American Conservative Fund supports Republican candidates, and American Future supports Democrats, mostly in primaries. That is not ideology; it is insurance. An industry that is regulated state by state, by legislatures and governors of both parties, is buying influence with whoever ends up in office, in the races that touch its bottom line. The aim is access and friendly policy, not a red or blue outcome.
That is also why the sports betting money behaves differently from crypto and tech spending. Those sectors have poured even larger sums, more than $100 million combined, mainly into federal races. Sports betting, by contrast, is fought largely in state capitols, because that is where the licenses, tax rates and legalization votes actually happen. Public Citizen's broader report found corporations have spent roughly $517 million on the 2026 cycle so far, close to a third of all corporate election spending since Citizens United, and a new record.
Where the money is landing
The clearest example is Georgia, one of the remaining states weighing whether to legalize sports betting. Win for America channeled more than $12 million into Georgia legislative races through its two affiliated PACs ahead of the primary, and by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's count in May, all but two of the roughly three dozen industry-backed candidates won. The PAC has also spent heavily in Pennsylvania, where lawmakers had floated raising taxes on online sportsbooks to help fund public transit, exactly the kind of proposal the industry mobilizes to defeat.
The spending has drawn pushback. Representative Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced a bill in May that would apply the same contribution limits to super PACs that already apply to direct donations, and pointed to the betting industry's spending as another argument that "it's time to get money out of politics." Public Citizen, which favors tighter campaign finance rules, framed the overall surge as a threat to democracy. Those are advocacy positions, and we note them as such; the spending itself is legal under current law.
The prediction-market subtext
Part of what is motivating the checkbook is a competitive threat the sportsbooks did not face a few years ago: prediction markets. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket now offer sports-style trading as federally regulated financial products, sidestepping the state licensing and taxes that sportsbooks pay, and they have cultivated political connections of their own. Donald Trump Jr. is a paid strategic adviser to Kalshi, holds an equity stake, and joined Polymarket's advisory board through his venture firm, while the administration's regulators have so far declined to block sports event contracts. For the established books, spending to shape state law is partly a defense of the very framework that prediction markets are trying to route around.
Our take
We cover the sports betting industry, including two companies, FanDuel and Fanatics, that we work with, and this is a story worth reporting straight. The takeaway is not partisan. It is that sports betting has become large enough, and regulated locally enough, that shaping state legislatures is now a core business function, and the industry is spending accordingly and on both sides of the aisle. Whether that is healthy for politics is a real debate, and the critics quoted here have a point of view; that is for voters and lawmakers to weigh, not us.
What matters for bettors is the through-line to policy you actually feel: tax rates, how many operators are licensed in your state, and whether legalization advances at all. When an industry spends $12 million in a single state's legislative races, it is buying a say over exactly those questions. It also sharpens the prediction-market fight we have been tracking from the congressional hearing to the courts: the sportsbooks are now defending their turf in the ad market as well as the courtroom. We will keep following where the money goes as November approaches.