The Camping World NOligarchy Profile
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Camping World holds a NOligarchy Score of 71.22 out of 100 — a number that sounds respectable until you see what it hides. The company stays out of Washington entirely, which saves it from the worst marks on political influence. But pull back the curtain and you find a CEO earning more than five hundred times the median worker’s salary, a dividend machine that kept shoveling cash to shareholders while customers and employees racked up grievances, and a regulatory fine record that ranks among the worst in its sector.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
100.0
Wealth Extraction
64.0
Playing by the Rules
9.4
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 100/100. Camping World spent nothing on federal lobbying and contributed nothing through a Political Action Committee (PAC) or executive-level donations from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). A perfect score here reflects absence, not virtue — the company simply chose not to play in Washington.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 64.03/100. The grade reflects a CEO-to-worker pay gap of 531-to-1 alongside millions in dividends paid out to shareholders while median workers earned under $58,000 a year.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 9.04/100. Camping World accumulated $3.5 million in fines across two cases during 2024–2025, the third-heaviest regulatory penalty burden of any company tracked in the sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retailers sector.
The Sector Context: Camping World ranks 14th out of 22 companies sharing its federal industry classification — sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retailers — with an overall score of 71.22 against a sector average of 68.3. Sitting above the sector average offers little comfort when a third-worst-in-sector legal fine record is dragging the overall grade down sharply.
A $30 Million CEO, Millions to Shareholders, and Regulators Still Knocking
Camping World pulled in $6.37 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year — enough to run a significant national retail operation. Yet that scale has not translated into meaningful worker earnings: the company’s median employee took home $57,238 in a year when the CEO pocketed over $30 million. At the same time, Camping World’s fine record earned it the third-worst penalty ranking in its entire sector. The sharpest imbalance in this data is not political — it’s internal: a company that chose to channel millions to shareholders in dividends while regulatory agencies and state attorneys general were actively penalizing it for how it treated workers and customers.
No Footprint in Washington
There is nothing to dissect here — and that is itself the story. Camping World’s lobbyists filed zero disclosures under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) during the two-year period, the company ran no PAC, and no executive contributions tied to the company appeared in Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. For a retailer with $6.37 billion in annual revenue operating across a heavily regulated industry — recreational vehicle (RV) sales, financing, service — that absence from federal influence-making is notable.
No former government officials were hired to work the political circuit on the company’s behalf. Camping World, at least by public record, chose to skip the Washington game entirely.
EXHIBIT — THE RESERVED SEAT
$0 in lobbying · $0 in PAC money
Camping World filed no federal lobbying and ran no corporate PAC in this window — the reserved seat at the witness table sits empty.
A $30 Million CEO and a $57,000 Workforce
The starkest number in Camping World’s financial picture is not its revenue — it’s the distance between the top and the bottom of its payroll. The CEO pay ratio is 531:1, per SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $30.4 million. The company’s 11,427 workers had a median salary of $57,238.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
9:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
12:55 PM — a median year, earned
1:00
passes the median employee’s full annual pay
12:55 PM · January 1
531× the median employee’s pay
At 531:1, Camping World's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 12:55 PM on the first workday of the year.
While no stock buybacks occurred during this period — meaning Camping World did not engage in a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses — the company did not stop rewarding capital owners through other means. Camping World paid approximately $31.4 million in dividends in fiscal year 2025 and approximately $24.7 million in fiscal year 2024, channeling a combined $56 million-plus directly to shareholders. Those dividend payments — going to investors rather than to the people stocking shelves, closing RV deals, or running service bays — represent a deliberate choice about where the company’s earnings flow.
Fines Stacked Up While Customers and Workers Paid the Price
Over the two-year tracking period, Camping World accumulated two regulatory and legal violations totaling $3.5 million in fines — the third-highest penalty burden of any company among the 22 tracked in the sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retailers sector.
The largest single case came in 2024, when the Oregon Attorney General hit Camping World with a $3.5 million consumer protection penalty. That fine alone accounts for 99 cents of every dollar Camping World paid in penalties during this period — a single enforcement action for how the company treated its customers.
The second case, a $17,132 workplace safety and health violation pursued by the New Mexico Environment Department in 2025, adds a different dimension: conditions on the ground that put employees at physical risk. Taken together, the two cases point to a company whose scale — $6.37 billion in annual revenue — did not translate into systems that reliably protected either its customers or the people working for it. This two-year window is a fraction of the company’s full docket as recorded on the source site.
This is the median American household.
Two earners, a kid, a dog, $80,610 a year — the exact middle of the country (U.S. Census).
NOTICE OF PENALTY — HOUSEHOLD SCALE
ISSUED TO
the median U.S. household
BASIS
0.06% of annual income
$44.51
the same share of income that $3.5 million in penalties takes of the company’s revenue
Camping World's $3.5 million in regulatory penalties is 0.06% of its revenue — for a median household, the same bite as a $44.51 ticket.