You have been intrinsically involved in this.

I just wanna know what led to this idea.

And what were some of the findings of the research that did and did not surprise you?

Well, I think like so many things that just started from a place of curiosity, we know that people like to say stick to sports.

But we also know that sports and politics are inextricably linked.

But we really wanted to know To what degree?

What numbers can we actually pull?

And so why not start at the top?

Started the wealthiest start at the owner.

So what we did is we took 160 owners across 125 teams in the MLB in the NHL, W N B, a NASCAR NFL and, of course, the MBA.

And we examined over the last five years since 2015.

What have their federal level donations looked like looked like, And what we found is that $47 million over the last five years, thes owners have contributed right thio, different politicians, and we found that overwhelmingly owners donate towards Republican politicians and in 2020 alone.

What we found is that $10 million went towards Republicans versus just 1.9 million towards Democrats.

And in the MBA, we thought that this information became even Mawr appropriate, even more important when players when we saw the Milwaukee Bucks go on that wildcat strike as you guys all saw.

And then the outcome of that was to ask for more support from owners and what ended up happening is Owner said, Okay, we're going to donate $300 million which is a ton of money over the next 10 years, towards causes that you all think are important.

That will help towards racial equality.

But remember at the same time this league that we think of as so socially progressive, we also know is overwhelmingly Republican and towards of the in terms of the things that they donate towards and often times what we're seeing is this sort of stalemate where we knew wealthy folks tend to skew more conservative because those people, those conservative politicians, tend to pass certain laws that helps the wealthy stay wealthy, right, So there's sort of this interesting Catch 22 going on here where folks are asking, mostly black and brown women are asking ownership.

Hey, we want backing and we want financial support.

But at the same time, what this data shows is that how much support can they actually give if on their in their personal lives there also donating to causes that in many ways actively oppress thes things these men and women are looking for?

I will point out that the one league that did not skew Republican in terms of the causes they donated towards was the W MBA.

And that did not surprise Rachel.

Uh huh.

Well, you know it xyz interesting to me, playing 14 years and and playing for the Boston Celtics in the Oklahoma City Thunder in particular.

Those owners are great.

They're great individuals I'm looking at with growth back.

Steve Paddle, Yoga, James Cash, Clay Blend Bennett.

They have great hearts.

I talked to these guys like, you know, once a week or twice a week on the telephone.

They're they're great friends of mine, and it's a sticky situation, and it's hard to judge any person on who they vote for, why they're voting for a certain party.

I mean because it's confusing.

I mean, us watching and not to get in the political state.

But watching the presidential debate, uh, it confused me well, to the point where it was like, Okay, I wanna vote this way.

I wanna vote this way.

But I'm confused right now, so I don't look at them any certain type of way because I know that they have a heart ago.

I know that the Boston franchise, in particular the ownership group, are doing a lot of things in the community.

And they have a lot of things, uh, that they plan on doing in the near future.

That's gonna benefit and back the players.

Uh, tremendously.

So, you know, I'm looking at this situation, and I just know that hopefully they're doing the right things for the right reason.

So I can't judge anybody whether they vote Republican or Democratic longest.

Their heart is in the right place when it comes down toe in social justice and equality in America.

Right, Well, into your point perk what we found what a professor Josh Kalla at Yale told me, is that oftentimes people lean one way or the other politically and have ideals that maybe are different from what the party line is going to be.

So, for instance, and owner like maybe the Boston Celtics owners that you're talking about, can fully believe or come to believe that black lives matter, that gay people should have the right to get married.

But what often happens is incredibly wealthy people will rank, perhaps, and not saying, I've talked to the Boston Celtics owners but will rank importance in terms of we're going to donate this way, even though we hold this social cause to be a value of ours.

We're going to in terms of where we spend our political dollars.

We're going to value the party that maybe helps with how we view money a little bit more than the party that perhaps more aligns with how we feel about gay marriage or any given social issue that you might come across.

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