The New Balance Athletics Inc NOligarchy Profile
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New Balance Athletics Inc scores 74.58 out of 100 on the NOligarchy scale — a record shaped by what the company chose not to do in formal channels (no registered lobbying, no Political Action Committee (PAC) spending, no regulatory fines) but pulled down sharply by an executive pay gap that, even measured only by industry estimates, is severe. As a privately held company, New Balance carries no obligation to open its books, which means the full scale of wealth distribution inside the firm simply cannot be verified from public records.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
92.9
Wealth Extraction
30.8
Playing by the Rules
100.0
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: 92.86/100. New Balance filed no federal lobbying disclosures and ran no PAC from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). The near-perfect grade reflects a company that stayed out of Washington’s registered influence market — while its executives quietly wrote large personal checks to federal campaigns.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 30.84/100. This is where the score takes a hit. No buyback or dividend data is publicly recorded for a private company. The grade is dragged down by an estimated CEO pay ratio — drawn from industry benchmarks — of 778:1, one of the largest gaps in this database even as an estimate.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100/100. No regulatory fines, no penalty cases, no public record of violations during the two-year period.
New Balance ranks 10th out of 12 companies in the Shoe retailers federal industry classification (North American Industry Classification System code 458210) used for sector baselines. The sector average score is 81.5; at 74.58, New Balance trails that baseline by nearly seven points — meaning most of its industry peers recorded a cleaner combined picture of political spending, pay gaps, and legal compliance.
The Bottom Line: A Pay Gap Shielded by Private Status
New Balance generated $5.3 billion in annual revenue — enough to make it a major force in American footwear, yet structured in a way that avoids the SEC disclosure rules forcing public companies to open their books. The sharpest imbalance in this profile is the estimated 778:1 CEO pay ratio: by industry benchmarks, the person running New Balance earns roughly 778 times what a typical worker in the sector takes home. That gap cannot be confirmed or challenged because the company is under no obligation to publish the real number. Meanwhile, individuals disclosing their employer as New Balance channeled $2.77 million in personal contributions to federal political candidates and committees — while the company itself filed zero lobbying disclosures.
No Corporate Lobbying, But Executives Opened Their Wallets
New Balance filed no disclosures under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) during the two-year period, retained no outside lobbying firms, and operated no PAC. The Senate LDA filing search returns no results for the company. No revolving-door pipeline of former government officials appears anywhere in the filing record. On every formal, registered measure of corporate political influence, New Balance shows a clean slate.
But the company’s executives did not stay quiet personally. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that individuals listing New Balance Athletics Inc as their employer poured $2.77 million in individual contributions into federal races and committees across the two-year period — $250,000 in Q3 2024, $1.5 million in Q2 2025, $519,000 in Q3 2025, and $501,000 in Q4 2025. These are personal donations, legally distinct from corporate PAC spending, but they flow from the same leadership suite that sets company strategy. The registered lobbying channel was silent; the personal checkbook was not.
An Estimated Pay Gap That No Disclosure Rule Requires Them to Correct
Because New Balance is privately held, it is not required to publish executive compensation, file annual financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), or disclose shareholder payouts of any kind. No buyback or dividend data is recorded. The full picture of how wealth moves inside New Balance — between its owners, its executives, and the people assembling and selling its shoes — is not visible from public filings.
What can be estimated comes from industry benchmarks. The best available figure is 778:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector, per AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch. That means the person at the top earns — by sector estimate — 778 times what a typical worker in the industry takes home. Because this figure is a benchmark estimate rather than a disclosed number, no precise dollar amount can be responsibly stated. The honest answer is that the real figure is not publicly disclosed, and the accountability gap that creates is real: a company generating $5.3 billion in annual earnings can set its internal pay structure however it chooses, with no obligation to tell anyone what that looks like.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
New Balance earned a perfect 100/100 on regulatory compliance, and the record supports it. No fines, no penalty cases, and no violations appear in the public enforcement database over the two-year tracking period. No government subsidies are recorded either.
It bears noting that the Good Jobs First violations database covers a company’s full historical record when you follow the source link — the two-year period reviewed here is a narrow slice. The absence of violations in this window is meaningful, but the fuller historical picture is available to readers who want to look beyond it.