Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

The NFL Owners and Olympic Organizers in Epstein’s Inbox

The sports media is ignoring the story, but wealthy sports figures are all over the Epstein files.

Chairman of the 2028 LA Olympics organizing committee Casey Wasserman speaks as President Donald Trump looks on during an executive order signing ceremony on August 5, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein did not want to ingratiate himself only to billionaires. He wanted to spend time with people who shaped the culture, and as we saw during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, nothing shapes the culture quite like the athletic industrial complex.

The website Front Office Sports went through the latest tranche of hurriedly redacted Epstein files, and it is shocking just how many NFL franchise owners are in these e-mails and assorted documents. They include—and this is a partial list—Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots; Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants and first cousin of Jessica Tisch, the current New York City police commissioner; Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins; Zygi Wilf, owner of the Minnesota Vikings; and Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons. There are more NFL owners in the Epstein files than attended the Super Bowl.

Denials have already been sputtered, and the owners’ public relations machines are working in overdrive to deny that they are anything more than incidental acquaintances of Epstein. But how many were actually friends with Epstein is less relevant than the fact that everyone who associated with Epstein ignored and excused what was often happening in plain sight around them. And as hard as their PR mavens are working to deflect attention, the sports media is working just as hard to ignore it all.

After all, who could possibly imagine that Kraft would be involved in anything illicit when it comes to exercising power over young women? ESPN has essentially not covered the sports figures involved with Epstein. There are scant few articles under the byline “ESPN News Services,” which draws from the Associated Press. There has been no investigative journalism or televised commentary on one of their yak-fests. When one considers that the NFL now owns a portion of ESPN, not to mention that the NFL is central to much of its programming, the network’s blasé attitude toward the story is odious.

Even more damning in the released files is the repeated presence of LA 2028 Olympic chairman Casey Wasserman. He says he did nothing wrong, though two Los Angeles supervisors and two members of the City Council have now called for him to resign from his role with the Olympic organizing committee. LA City Council member Monica Rodriguez said that Wasserman represents “a threat to the integrity of the games.”

Wassermans’s clients are already leaving his talent agency in protest. Olympian Abby Wambach and popstar Chappell Roan have dropped Wasserman and are calling for him to step down from the agency that bears his name.

Of course, by any moral marker, Wasserman should not be allowed within 500 yards of the Olympics (or a school). His e-mails to Epstein’s partner in child trafficking, Ghislaine Maxwell, date back 20 years and include unredacted tidbits like, “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” LA Mayor Karen Bass, however, has not joined the call for him to disappear from the 2028 Games, already being called “The Epstein Olympics.”

The unconvincing excuses for keeping Wasserman at his post include the difficulty of replacing the chair of the LA28 Olympic organizing committee at this late of a date, as well as his ability to raise corporate cash. After what the organizing committee described as an “internal investigation,” Wasserman, whose grandfather Lew Wasserman was one of Hollywood’s most powerful people, is staying on as chair. We need to fight to see every page of the Epstein files with only the names of the survivors and victims redacted—but that is not enough. To paraphrase journalist Nolan Higdon, it is becoming more and more difficult to “shield the architects of the second Gilded Age”—and they deserve no such protections.

The Epstein files have exposed that global elites have never been wealthier and more influential, but they’ve become drunk on power after decades of plunder. This second Gilded Age isn’t ending until the exposure is total and its criminal offenders are frog-marched out of the owners’ boxes.

Send a letter to the editor

Reprints & permissions

Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL.

Bad Bunny’s Technicolor Halftime Stole the Super Bowl Bad Bunny’s Technicolor Halftime Stole the Super Bowl

The Puerto Rican artist’s performance was a gleeful rebuke of Trump’s death cult and a celebration of life.

A Call Is Rising for Nations to Boycott the Trump World Cup A Call Is Rising for Nations to Boycott the Trump World Cup

As marauding state agents fill US streets, a leading German soccer official says countries should consider what was once unthinkable: skipping the 2026 World Cup.

A Minneapolis Teacher Wants the Whole Country in the Streets A Minneapolis Teacher Wants the Whole Country in the Streets

Dan Troccoli, a public middle school teacher, says everyone should start “emulating” Minneapolis’s resistance to ICE and the Trump regime.

Is the Sports World Finally Giving Up Its Right to Remain Silent? Is the Sports World Finally Giving Up Its Right to Remain Silent?

Last year, the sports industry remained quiet in the face of Trump’s violence. Now with the killing of Renee Good, it may be waking up to the dangers of this administration.

In a Year of Violent Tumult, the Sports World Was Silent In a Year of Violent Tumult, the Sports World Was Silent

When the country needed them to speak out, most athletes kept mum—and a few openly embraced Trumpism.

Don’t Listen to the Ghouls Exploiting the Tragedy of Bondi Beach Don’t Listen to the Ghouls Exploiting the Tragedy of Bondi Beach

The dead have one use to these people: They exist to justify Israel’s conquest of Gaza and the Palestinian blood that now will surely be shed. Facts be damned.

Subscription Services

Accessibility Statement

Latest from the nation

The NFL Owners and Olympic Organizers in Epstein’s Inbox

The Antidemocratic Zealots Presiding Over Trump’s Makeover of US History

Keir Starmer’s Failure Is Nearly Complete

JD Vance: A Prisoner of the Caucasus

VIDEO: People in Denmark Are a Lot Happier Than People in the United States. Here’s Why.

Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy

© The Nation