The QVC / HSN NOligarchy Profile
M
O
D
E
R
A
T
E
QVC / HSN earns a NOligarchy Score of 55.75 out of 100 — a middling grade that masks a striking internal contradiction. The company’s legal record is clean. Its lobbying budget is modest. But underneath both sits a financial architecture that has channeled billions of dollars to investors year after year while the people answering phones, packing boxes, and staffing studios took home a median salary that wouldn’t cover rent in most American cities.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
48.0
Wealth Extraction
40.3
Playing by the Rules
90.0
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.
•
Political Access Grade: 48.04/100. QVC / HSN spent $1.73 million on federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the full two-year tracking period. No Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions were filed, and executive giving was negligible, but the lobbying itself was consistent, quarterly, and strategically targeted at the exact regulatory pressure points that affect a live-television and online retail operation.
•
Wealth Extraction Grade: 40.38/100. A CEO-to-worker pay gap of 232-to-1, combined with more than $9.7 billion in dividend payments across two consecutive fiscal years, paints a picture of a company that has reliably siphoned cash upward while its typical worker earned roughly $40,000 a year.
•
Playing by the Rules Grade: 90.0/100. No regulatory fines or recorded violations appear on the public docket. The company did receive $3 million in public subsidies in 2024, which pulled its score below a perfect mark.
QVC / HSN ranks 13th out of 21 companies in the Warehouse clubs, supercenters, and other general merchandise retailers sector. The sector average score is 54.0 — meaning QVC / HSN sits just above the industry midpoint, offering only the thinnest separation from a baseline dragged down by some of the largest and most aggressive retailers on earth.
The Bottom Line: Billions Out the Door for Investors, $40,000 a Year for the Workers Who Earned It
QVC / HSN reported $9.23 billion in annual revenue, per SEC EDGAR 10-K (CIK 0001355096) — a sum large enough to rank it as a significant player in general merchandise retail — yet its median employee earned $39,890 last year, roughly $19 an hour and below the living wage in most major U.S. metro areas. In fiscal year 2024 alone, the company paid out $4.81 billion in dividends to shareholders: that is more than half its entire annual revenue, funneled to capital owners in a single year. In fiscal year 2025, it paid out $4.89 billion — 53 cents out of every dollar of revenue. Against that backdrop, the $1.73 million spent knocking on congressional doors looks like a rounding error — but the issues those lobbyists pursued touched tariffs, tax rates, labor rules, and payment systems, each one a direct lever on the company’s cost structure and profit margins. And even as dividends flowed out at a rate that dwarfs its wage bill, the company accepted $3 million in public subsidies in 2024.
Steady Pressure on the Issues That Move the Margin
QVC / HSN poured $1.73 million into federal lobbying across Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period), according to Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings. That averages out to roughly $215,000 per quarter — not a massive war chest by Washington standards, but consistent and purposeful. The company relied on in-house lobbyists and engaged no outside lobbying firms, yet those lobbyists made contact with 13 separate federal bodies — reaching both chambers of Congress as well as U.S. Customs & Border Protection, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and agencies ranging from the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Department of Labor (DOL).
FEDERAL CONTACT LOG
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
57
≈ every 9th business day
SENATE
57
≈ every 9th business day
U.S. Customs & Border Protection
8
≈ every 62nd business day
Treasury, Dept of
6
≈ every 83rd business day
Homeland Security, Dept of (DHS)
4
≈ every 125th business day
13 federal bodies named in federal lobbying filings · 2024-Q3–2026-Q2
Between 2024-Q3 and 2026-Q2, QVC / HSN was named in lobbying filings reaching 13 federal bodies — from HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to SENATE.
The spending split across seven distinct issue areas, and each one maps directly to the economics of running a live-shopping and online retail business:
Trade and tariffs appeared in every quarterly filing. QVC / HSN sources merchandise globally and delivers it to American living rooms — which means tariff policy is not an abstract trade debate but a direct hit to product cost. Filings cited global tariff policies and exclusions, the continuation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and Sections 232 and 301 of existing trade law across multiple quarters.
Taxation drew equal emphasis, also appearing in every quarterly filing. Lobbyists referenced An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14 — enacted as Public Law No. 119-21 on July 4, 2025, and widely known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — in the context of the research-and-development tax credit, bonus depreciation rules, the corporate tax rate, and, in the most recent quarter, the extension of the Worker Opportunity Tax Credit.
Labor rules were a recurring presence throughout the period. Filings specifically named DOL joint employer regulations, DOL independent contractor regulations, and overtime rules. QVC / HSN relies on a mix of on-air hosts, warehouse workers, and call-center staff — some potentially classified as contractors — which means rules defining who counts as an employee and which companies bear liability as joint employers land directly on its payroll exposure.
Consumer issues and data privacy were cited in every filing. Lobbyists referenced the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, the use of artificial intelligence technologies in retail, and platform policy around social-commerce competitors — including filings that cited the Kids Online Safety Act (S. 1748) and the App Store Accountability Act (S. 1586). For a company whose survival depends on reaching viewers where they watch, platform legislation is operational strategy, not background noise.
Banking and payment systems rounded out the core agenda. Filings flagged modifications to Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) arrangements and credit card interchange fees, and most recently cited the Credit Card Competition Act of 2026 (S. 3623). QVC / HSN sells big-ticket items on installment plans to budget-conscious shoppers; the fee structures on those payment products directly affect conversion rates and customer defaults.
Transportation and postal issues — freight congestion, port policy, supply chain theft, and mail delivery — appeared in every quarterly filing, reflecting the company’s dependence on getting physical goods from overseas factories to American doorsteps on time. Lobbyists referenced the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 (H.R. 2853, placed on the Union Calendar in January 2026, currently in progress) multiple times across postal and consumer-issues filings — a bill that addresses organized inventory theft and fraudulent returns at the scale that concerns any large retailer processing millions of shipments annually.
No PAC contributions were recorded for this period. Beyond a single $1,750 executive contribution recorded in late 2025, no additional outside political giving appeared in Federal Election Commission (FEC) data. The access strategy here is transactional and targeted: show up consistently on the issues that move the margin — without the more visible footprint of PAC giving.
$9.7 Billion to Shareholders, $39,890 to the Median Worker
The single most revealing number in QVC / HSN’s financial picture is not its revenue or its lobbying bill. It is the dividend total.
According to SEC 10-K filings, QVC / HSN paid out $4.81 billion in dividends in fiscal year 2024 and $4.89 billion in fiscal year 2025. Those payments went to shareholders — disproportionately to the wealthiest 10% of Americans, who own 93% of the stock market. Every one of those payouts was a deliberate choice to send cash out of the business rather than invest it in the people running it. In 2025, that dividend equaled 53% of annual revenue: for every dollar QVC / HSN earned from selling jewelry, cookware, and clothing on television and online, more than fifty cents went straight out the door to investors.
The company’s median worker earned $39,890 in fiscal year 2024, according to the SEC DEF 14A proxy filing. That is slightly above the federal poverty line for a family of three and well below what most housing cost calculators consider affordable in any mid-size American city.
The CEO pay ratio is 232:1, the 3-year average of Compensation Actually Paid, per the SEC DEF 14A. That figure accounts for the actual realized value of equity awards, not just what was granted on paper — making it a more accurate reflection of what the person at the top took home relative to the person at the bottom. The CEO’s three-year average package came to about $9.2 million. At that ratio, the CEO collected in a single morning what a typical frontline employee would spend all year earning.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
passes the median employee’s full annual pay
9:58 AM · January 2
232× the median employee’s pay
At 232:1, QVC / HSN's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 9:58 AM on January 2.
No stock buyback activity is recorded for the Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 tracking period, which means the company channeled all of its shareholder returns through dividends alone during this time. That is not a more virtuous arrangement — dividends still concentrate billions in the hands of large investors while the workforce absorbs the opportunity cost. The company also does not publicly disclose its total employee headcount, which means it is not possible for the public to calculate what those billions would have meant distributed across the people who earned them. That disclosure gap is consequential: without a headcount, there is no way to hold management accountable for the trade-off in hard arithmetic.
A Clean Penalty Record, and a Government Check in the Mail
QVC / HSN carries no recorded regulatory violations and paid zero fines across the two-year period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026. No cases, no settlements, no penalty payments appear in the public record. A spotless compliance record is genuinely notable in a sector where consumer protection violations, advertising disputes, and labor enforcement actions are routine.
What did appear, however, was a $3 million public subsidy received in 2024, drawn from a Pennsylvania grant, according to the Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker. That is public money — drawn from taxpayers — handed to a company that simultaneously paid out nearly $4.9 billion in dividends to its shareholders in that same fiscal year. The contrast does not require editorial comment: the arithmetic speaks clearly enough.
EXHIBIT — ONE TEACHER-YEAR AT A TIME
42 years of an average teacher’s salary
The $3 million in public subsidies QVC / HSN collected would fund 42 years of an average teacher's salary.