The Sony NOligarchy Profile
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Sony enters this analysis with a NOligarchy Score of 83.2 out of 100 — above the sector average of 64.3, and the product of a company that spends almost nothing on political influence, carries no recorded regulatory fines, and whose clearest accountability gap sits at the top of the pay scale.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
92.1
Wealth Extraction
67.6
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.
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Political Access Grade: 92.07/100. Sony spent zero dollars on federal lobbying from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (the two-year tracking period), but its registered Political Action Committee (PAC) channeled $83,500 to federal candidates, split roughly 54% Democratic and 46% Republican.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 67.91/100. No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for the period. The CEO pay gap — estimated at 115 times the median worker’s earnings — reflects a structural imbalance at the top that cannot be verified from public filings.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 90.0/100. No regulatory fines or enforcement penalties appear on the public record for the two-year tracking period. The main asterisk on this grade is $12.5 million in public subsidies Sony collected from state governments during the same period.
Sector Context: Sony ranks 5th out of 12 among companies sharing its federal industry classification, Computer & Electronic Product Manufacturing. Its score of 83.2 sits well above the sector average of 64.3, making Sony an accountability outlier among industry peers — on the better side of that ledger.
A Quiet Operation With One Persistent Blind Spot
Sony generated $23.6 billion in annual revenue — enough to make the absence of a publicly disclosed CEO pay ratio feel like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. The company filed no federal lobbying disclosures, racked up no recorded regulatory fines, and returned no documented buybacks or dividends to shareholders over the two-year tracking period. What remains is a single, unresolved accountability gap: at a company this size, the gap between what the person at the top earns and what the people on the floor take home is estimated at 115 to 1, and the public has no verified number to push back against.
A Quiet PAC and No Lobbyists in Sight
Sony’s formal influence operation in Washington is modest by the standards of a company its size. Federal lobbying disclosures under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) show $0 spent on direct federal lobbying across the entire two-year tracking period — no retained outside firms, no in-house lobbyists, no bills referenced in any filing.
What does exist is Sony’s PAC. Registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the PAC handed out $83,500 to federal candidates between Q3 2024 and Q2 2026. The split was roughly bipartisan — about 54 cents of every dollar went to Democrats, 46 cents to Republicans — a pattern that keeps access open across the aisle rather than betting on a single political team. No former government officials were identified among Sony’s registered lobbyists.
For a company generating $23.6 billion in revenue, $83,500 in PAC contributions amounts to less than four-thousandths of one percent of annual sales — a token presence rather than a serious influence campaign.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap at the Top
Sony is a foreign-incorporated company and is not required to publicly disclose its CEO pay ratio under U.S. securities law. The best available figure is 115:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. That means for every dollar the typical Sony worker earns, the person at the top is estimated to take home 115 times as much. Because this figure is a sector-wide benchmark rather than a company-specific disclosure, no single dollar amount can responsibly be attached to it without stacking two layers of estimation on top of each other.
No stock buyback or dividend payments are recorded for the two-year tracking period, so no shareholder payout calculation is possible from the available data.
A Clean Violation Record — and a Government Check on the Way In
No regulatory fines or enforcement penalties appear on the public record for Sony over the two-year tracking period. For a company of this size, operating across consumer electronics, entertainment streaming, and global data infrastructure, an absence of recorded enforcement actions over eight quarters is a meaningful finding.
The more textured story sits on the subsidy side of the ledger. While Sony carried no public compliance burden, governments were simultaneously channeling public money to the company. Between 2024 and 2025, Sony collected $12,469,910 in public subsidies across three grants. The largest, worth $8,854,867, arrived in 2025 from New York. A second grant of $3,477,000 came from California in 2024, and a third of $138,043 from Washington state the same year. All three flowed to Sony’s film and television production subsidiaries.
EXHIBIT — ONE TEACHER-YEAR AT A TIME
173 years of an average teacher’s salary
The $12.5 million in public subsidies Sony collected would fund 173 years of an average teacher's salary.