The Youth Sports Swindle: How the LA84 Foundation Undermines Social Justice

For episode 9 we debunk the feel good fuzzies of the LA84 Foundation, often perceived as a benign altruistic youth sports non-profit but which is — after some serious scrutiny — really an unaccountable non-profit who merely claims to promote social justice and the empowering of marginalized communities. In practice, they’re more active in whitewashing LA than they are in making it more equitable. They’re massive investors in real estate giants like Blackstone and Oaktree Capital (the slumlords who led a misinformation campaign to defeat Prop 10 in November), and their work has been used to leverage the 2028 Olympics. Read more of our research on LA84 here and a recap of its annual summit — which took place after the recording of this episode — here.