The Disney NOligarchy Profile
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Disney’s NOligarchy Score is 19.1 out of 100, placing it near the bottom of the accountability scale tracked from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period covered by this profile).
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
25.4
Wealth Extraction
20.7
Playing by the Rules
1.6
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: 23.55/100. This reflects Disney’s steady federal lobbying presence, a modest but real corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) operation, and a roster of former Capitol Hill staffers now working its lobbying accounts.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 22.51/100. This reflects a CEO pay ratio hundreds of times the median employee’s earnings, even though no buyback or dividend totals were matched in this period.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 3.11/100. This reflects $289.3 million in regulatory penalties and legal settlements across 10 cases, the worst fine record in its sector as tracked here.
The Sector Context: Disney ranks 15th out of 16 companies in the Sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retailers sector — the classification tied to its retail and food-and-beverage revenue line for market-share purposes. The sector average score is 64.9, and Disney trails that standard by a wide margin, sitting near the very bottom of a peer group that includes retailers like Bass Pro Shops and REI Co-op.
The Bottom Line: A Media Giant With the Worst Fine Record on Its Own Sector List
Disney reported $94.4 billion in annual revenue in its most recent fiscal year, according to SEC filings. Against that scale, the company paid its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) $45.9 million in total compensation in a single year — 805 times what its median employee earned — while regulators and courts extracted $289.3 million in penalties and settlements from the company over the two years tracked here, the largest single-year total in its sector. No stock buyback or dividend totals were matched to Disney in this period, so it is not possible to say how shareholder payouts compare to worker pay or fines. What the record does show clearly is a company whose legal exposure — driven overwhelmingly by a single $233 million wage-and-hour settlement — dwarfs its modest, steady spending on Washington influence.
$2.6 million in political spending
Two-story house · 12 ft
0.8×
Stacked as $100 bills, Disney's $2.6 million in political spending rises 9 feet — 0.8× the height of a two-story house.
Spending to Buy a Seat at the Table
Disney spent $1,750,000 on federal lobbying according to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings across the two-year period, ranging from $330,000 in 2024 to $1,000,000 in 2025 before pulling back to $420,000 through the first half of 2026.
Its top lobbying issue by far was Communications/Broadcasting/Radio/TV, cited 28 times in filings — a direct reflection of Disney’s ownership of broadcast and cable networks and its streaming business, all of which are shaped by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules and copyright law. Taxation/Internal Revenue Code followed with 12 mentions, tied to Disney’s exposure on corporate tax policy, and Travel/Tourism drew 9 mentions tied to filings on “theme park issues,” which matters directly to a company that runs some of the largest parks and resorts in the country. Filings also cited Copyright/Patent/Trademark issues 8 times, including references to the Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act (H.R.6028) — a bill cited repeatedly across multiple quarters of copyright-related lobbying, though the filings do not state what position Disney’s lobbyists took on it. Labor Issues/Antitrust/Workplace drew 7 mentions, described in filings as “Workplace Benefits, Training and Development.”
On top of lobbying, Disney’s corporate PAC contributed $343,300 according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data, split nearly evenly between the parties — $106,300 to Democrats and $112,000 to Republicans.
Disney's PAC gave $123,300 to Democrats and $128,500 to Republicans — a 49% / 51% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
49%
51%
Democrats · $123,300
Republicans · $128,500
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
Individual executives tied to Disney also gave $419,724 in personal political contributions tracked by the FEC, concentrated almost entirely in the third quarter of 2024. Disney also employs three lobbyists who previously held government positions, including a former chief of staff to a sitting senator and a former member of Congress — giving the company direct personal relationships inside the institutions it lobbies. Disney shares lobbying firms with other major corporations: FGS Global also represents Apple and Lenovo, CGCN Group also represents News Corp, and Ballard Partners also represents Shein.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Disney
client
FGS GLOBAL (US) LLC (FKA FGH HOLDINGS LLC)
lobbying firm
Apple Inc
also a client
Lenovo Group Limited
also a client
BALLARD PARTNERS also lobbies for Shein
CGCN GROUP, LLC also lobbies for News Corp
Why it matters: the same firm argues Disney’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Disney’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
An Undisclosed Pay Gap
Disney’s CEO pay ratio is 805:1, based on the company’s own fiscal year disclosure according to its SEC DEF 14A filing. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $45.9 million.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
9:00
10:00
11:00
11:35 AM — a median year, earned
12:00
passes the median employee’s full annual pay
11:35 AM · January 1
805× the median employee’s pay
At 805:1, Disney's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 11:35 AM on the first workday of the year.
Because Disney’s stock buybacks and dividend payouts were not matched to any dollar totals in this period, it is not possible to calculate what a worker raise funded by those payouts would have looked like, or to compare shareholder payouts against the median employee’s salary of $56,932. The absence of a recorded buyback or dividend figure here is a gap in what’s publicly visible across these eight quarters, not a statement that no such payouts occurred.
Buybacks work by reducing the number of shares outstanding, which mechanically inflates per-share earnings — a metric tied directly to the performance bonuses of the same executives who approve the spending. Without a recorded buyback total for Disney in this period, that dynamic cannot be quantified here, but the CEO pay ratio alone shows the scale of the gap between top leadership and the median worker.
Fines Treated as a Business Expense
Disney paid $289,309,141 in penalties and settlements across 10 cases during the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, according to Good Jobs First — the highest total of any company in its sector as tracked here. This two-year window is a fraction of the company’s full docket on the source site, which covers Disney’s history well beyond this period.
The single largest case was a $233,000,000 wage-and-hour settlement from a private lawsuit at the state level in 2024, detailed on Violation Tracker — a category that alone accounts for more than three-quarters of Disney’s total fines in this period. That was followed by a $43,250,000 employment discrimination settlement in 2025, also from a state-level private lawsuit, and a $10,000,000 privacy violation penalty from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2025. Rounding out the record are a $2,750,000 consumer protection settlement with the California Attorney General in 2026, a $146,976 telecommunications penalty from the FCC tied to ESPN in 2024, and four separate workplace safety violations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) totaling roughly $105,915.
EXHIBIT — ONE TEACHER-YEAR AT A TIME
3,775 years of an average teacher’s salary
The $271.8 million in public subsidies Disney collected would fund 3,775 years of an average teacher's salary.
No public subsidy or tax credit data was matched to Disney in the tracked sources, so there is no subsidy contrast to report alongside this fine record.