HARRISBURG — As top Pennsylvania lawmakers worked to reach a long-awaited budget deal, three Barstool Sports influencers sent a message to their millions of followers: Harrisburg wants to tax your fun.
Publicly, there was no plan to do so. But behind the scenes, top Democrats were trying to sell their GOP counterparts on a deal that would increase taxes on sports betting and online gaming to fund public transit, according to a source close to the talks.
No such provision appeared in the final budget signed on Nov. 12.
The videos, posted between Nov. 7 and 11, demonstrated the changing landscape of influence peddling in a decentralized media environment where Americans flock to digital personalities for their news and information.
They also raise questions about whether they constituted lobbying, and if Barstool Sports and its stars had the needed state registration to do such advocacy work.
“Philly fans don’t ask for much, just decent refs and maybe a team that doesn’t break us every other Sunday,” Max Dolente, a producer and Philadelphia sports blogger, said in a video on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Now, Harrisburg wants to break something else: our wallets.”
Dan “Big Cat” Katz told his 1.8 million followers on X: “Politicians have a spending problem, and instead of fixing it, they just keep coming after the fans like you. … Stop taxing the enjoyment out of the game.”
And Adam “Rone” Ferrone, another Barstool personality who goes by “Rone’s Gamblin Corner” on X, said that “every bet feels like we’re up against the opponent, spread, and Harrisburg’s hand in our pocket.” He added, “We finally get legal gambling, something that we’ve wanted forever, and now they’re trying to tax it into the ground.”
Betting on sports is awesome. Don’t let higher taxes kill the vibe. pic.twitter.com/Ik9KQ7jkwc
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) November 12, 2025
All three work for Barstool Sports, a popular website that has a multiyear marketing partnership with DraftKings.
The digital media company is not registered to lobby in Pennsylvania, nor are the influencers. However, DraftKings and “its affiliates” are.
Barstool Sports and the influencers declined to comment, while DraftKings would not answer a question about whether the former are covered under its lobbying registration.
DraftKings said in an email that it “did not request or pay for these posts,” and declined to share any additional details about its financial relationship with Barstool.
Registration is broadly required before a business, group, or individual is allowed to influence Pennsylvania lawmakers to act in a certain way, with violations subject to fines or criminal penalties.
Mary Fox, executive director of the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission, told Spotlight PA that the videos could be considered a type of lobbying referred to in state law as “indirect communication.”
The Lobbying Disclosure Law defines this as communication to “encourage others, including the general public, to take action, the purpose or foreseeable effect of which is to directly influence legislative action or administrative action,” regardless of medium.
However, Fox said the videos could be covered by exceptions that hinge on how much money or time was spent on their development, production, or dissemination.
“So, to determine whether any of these individuals would be required to register as a lobbyist, we would need additional information and to possibly conduct an investigation,” Fox said.
The commission can choose to open an investigation upon receipt of a complaint from an individual or referral from the Pennsylvania Department of State.
It can be tough to legislate the difference between a constituent speaking their mind and a professional campaign with a targeted aim. State Rep. Bryan Cutler (R., Lancaster), former speaker of the Pennsylvania House, helped negotiate the commonwealth’s last major lobbying law rewrite.
“Citizen advocacy is very important,” he told Spotlight PA. “But then you have individuals who are compensated to engage on particular issues, and that’s really where that distinction is.
“So the question would really go back to both the companies and them as individuals,” Cutler said. “Were they being paid to put out those videos?”
Sports betting was legalized by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2018 and has ballooned in size since. In the first full year of sanctioned betting, Pennsylvanians placed almost $2.5 billion in wagers. In the most recent year, that total reached $8.7 billion, bringing in $774 million in revenue for sports-betting companies and casinos.
While bettors can legally place wagers in brick-and-mortar casinos, the vast majority of this gambling is done online.
There’s also money to be made for digital media companies like Barstool Sports. It is a registered marketing affiliate with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board and gets a flat fee if someone signs up to place bets through a link on its website, according to board communications director Douglas Harbach.
Pennsylvania currently taxes sports betting at 36%, the 7th highest rate in the country, according to the Tax Foundation, a tax policy nonprofit. The state earned $175 million in revenue last fiscal year from that source, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
The tax is levied on the casinos and other gambling companies, although in states like Illinois, the cost gets passed to consumers.
The industry was clearly on the defensive in the final days of closed-door talks.
For instance, the Sports Betting Alliance spent more than $500,000 on TV ads attacking any tax increase in the week leading up to the budget passage, according to The Inquirer.
The alliance — which represents multiple top firms such as DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics — also spent as much as $108,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads asking viewers to “tell your legislator NO tax hike on legal online betting.”
Jeremy Kudon, a lobbyist with New York City-based law firm Orrick who leads the alliance, told Spotlight PA he did not have a total on the group’s spending.
He said the ad campaign started in response to “intelligence that we received that budget negotiators were contemplating increasing the tax rates on online sports betting from 36% to somewhere between 50% and 54% and online casino table games from 16% to 54%.”
(Online gambling, also known as iGaming, is another big money maker for companies, bringing in $625 million in revenue in the most recent fiscal year in Pennsylvania.)
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Those new rates, he said, would be among the highest in the nation.
“We believe it’s our duty to inform our member companies’ customers about this threat, especially since a few of the companies would have no choice but to pass this tax on to their customers in the form of a fee,” Kudon said in an email.
He said that he was not involved in the influencer videos, but the alliance did employ some extra lobbying firepower.
Powerhouse lobbying firm Long Nyquist registered to work on behalf of the alliance on Nov. 7. It has a long history within the Capitol, boasting particularly strong connections to state Senate Republicans, and deep involvement in gaming issues.
The firm did not respond to a request for comment.
