The Nike NOligarchy Profile
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Nike posts a NOligarchy Score of 31.18 out of 100 — placing it near the bottom of the accountability scale. A perfect 100 means zero dollars spent on political influence and zero regulatory infractions; Nike’s score reflects heavy spending across the executive-pay, shareholder-payout, and political-influence categories.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
20.6
Wealth Extraction
14.8
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: 20.62/100. Nike channeled millions in lobbying and Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions toward Washington during the tracked period — leaving little room for a high grade on political restraint.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 14.62/100. Nike’s combination of a 746-to-1 CEO pay ratio, more than $7.2 billion in stock buybacks across two fiscal years, and a tax structure that pared its effective rate below the federal statutory rate pushed this grade close to the floor.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 83.94/100. A small number of regulatory fines are recorded against Nike in the public sources tracked for this period — modest in dollar terms for a company of this size, but enough to pull the grade below a clean score.
Nike ranks 20 out of 22 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (Sporting goods, hobby, and musical instrument retailers). The sector average score is 68.3; Nike’s 31.18 trails the industry baseline by more than 37 points. Because Nike scores below 50, readers looking for higher-scoring options in this sector can find them in the Better Alternatives section below.
A $7.2 Billion Vote Against Its Own Workforce
From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the two-year tracking period — Nike poured more than $7.2 billion into buying back its own stock while the median Nike employee took home $48,695 a year. The company generated $46.4 billion in annual revenue and chose to channel a sum larger than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many small nations back to shareholders, rather than to the 76,600 workers who built every pair of sneakers, staffed every store, and shipped every order. Political spending adds another layer: more than $5.3 million flowed into lobbying, PAC contributions, and executive donations over the same period — and a small penalty total rounds out the public record.
Nike's $5.3 million in political spending equals 66 years of median-household income — enough people, one per year worked, to fill 0.4 fully-boarded 737s.
Knocking on Washington’s Door — Quarterly
Nike funneled $4.96 million into federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026. On top of that, Nike’s PAC handed another $344,000 to federal candidates, splitting 76.4% to Democrats and 23.6% to Republicans — a hedge across the aisle designed to guarantee access no matter who controls Congress. Nike executives added a further $31,038 in individual contributions.
The lobbying machine ran consistently — 11 lobbyists working through one outside firm, filing with the House of Representatives and Senate simultaneously, while also reaching the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce (DOC), and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
The dominant issue was trade — 16 separate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings cited international trade and labor standards. For a company that manufactures almost nothing inside the United States and relies on a global supply chain stitched through Vietnam, Indonesia, and China, every tariff schedule, every trade enforcement mechanism, and every labor-standards agreement is a direct line into Nike’s cost structure. Lobbyists also filed repeatedly on civil rights and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) issues; environmental sustainability and climate policy; digital privacy and intellectual property; international taxation; and issues specific to the apparel and athletic industries. Filings do not disclose which direction Nike wanted these policies to move — only that its representatives were in the room when they were being written.
Nike retains Capitol Counsel LLC as its outside lobbying firm — a firm that also represents AT&T, giving it a seat at tables where telecom, trade, and technology policy intersect.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
Nike
client
CAPITOL COUNSEL LLC
lobbying firm
AT&T
also a client
Why it matters: the same firm argues Nike’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens Nike’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
76
≈ every 7th business day
SENATE
76
≈ every 7th business day
Treasury, Dept of
11
≈ every 45th business day
Commerce, Dept of (DOC)
8
≈ every 62nd business day
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)
8
≈ every 62nd business day
5 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, Nike was named in lobbying filings reaching 5 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
Billions for Shareholders, Pennies for Workers
Nike’s CEO pay ratio is 746:1 — SEC DEF 14A. That means for every dollar the median Nike employee earned, Nike’s chief executive collected $746. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $36.3 million. The worker on the other side of that equation took home a median $48,695. That gap is not a footnote; it is the official figure Nike filed with federal regulators.
Then there are the buybacks. Nike spent $2.985 billion buying back its own stock in fiscal year 2025 and $4.25 billion in fiscal year 2024 — $7.235 billion across two fiscal years. This is a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses tied to those same metrics. The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 76,600 workers a $94,451.70 raise, spread across the last 2 fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $47,225.85 annual raise the company chose not to give.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 77K employees
Spent on buybacks
$7.2B
directed to shareholders
÷ 77K
workers
Per-worker raise
$94,452
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 97% annual raise on the median worker's $48,695 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
Nike also paid $2.3 billion in dividends in fiscal 2025 and $2.169 billion in fiscal 2024 — $4.469 billion in total traditional investor payouts on top of the buybacks. The data shows they didn’t have to choose between their investors and their workforce; they could have paid out $4.469 billion in traditional dividends and still funded that massive worker raise. They simply chose not to.
Buybacks also directly trigger bonuses for the executives who approved them. By shrinking the total number of shares outstanding, Nike’s leadership boosted Earnings Per Share (EPS) — a metric that sits at the heart of executive compensation formulas. The 746:1 pay gap is in part the bill that lands after those decisions compound.
Nike’s tax strategy adds another layer. The effective tax rate used in Nike’s scoring is 20.3% — 0.7 percentage points below the 21% federal statutory rate that Congress set. Nike’s 10-K discloses that its fiscal year 2025 reported rate was 17.1%, with several mechanisms doing the cutting: a foreign-derived intangible income (FDII) benefit reduced the rate by 5.3 percentage points; a U.S. research and development (R&D) tax credit trimmed it by a further 2.1 percentage points; and a tax holiday on foreign operations — set to expire in 2031 — delivered $271 million in benefits in fiscal 2025 alone. The filing also identifies a $133 million non-cash deferred tax benefit under Internal Revenue Code Section 987, related to foreign currency losses. Nike’s Dutch operations are the subject of an ongoing European Commission State Aid investigation into tax rulings granted by the Netherlands. The IRS is auditing fiscal years 2017 through 2019, focused on transfer pricing, R&D credits, and related items.
Nike chose to pay 0.7 percentage points less than the rate Congress set. That gap is not an accounting accident — it is a structural decision that shifts real tax burden off Nike’s balance sheet and onto everyone else. On top of that, Nike holds Unrecognized Tax Benefits equal to 19% of its pre-tax income — contested deductions it has claimed on its taxes that the IRS has not yet agreed are valid.
Statutory federal rate
21%
This company
20.3%
Nike's effective federal tax rate was 20.3% against the 21% statutory rate — 0.7 percentage points drained away.
A Nominal Fine Total on the Public Docket
Over the two-year tracking period — Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the public sources tracked here record $80,655 in total regulatory fines against Nike. For a company generating $46.4 billion in annual revenue, that sum amounts to less than two-tenths of a single cent for every dollar of sales — a figure that barely registers against the scale of the enterprise. The tracked sources do not include case-level detail for this penalty total, so the specific agency, offense category, or individual infractions behind the figure are not publicly visible in the data available here. What is visible is that Nike’s enforcement footprint, at this dollar level, is effectively negligible relative to the financial activity documented in every other section of this profile.