Packers Shareholders

 Packers Shareholders

By: Bradley Rosencrans

The Green Bay Packers are the only publicly owned NFL team still currently in the league. Every other team has one or a few main owners that control the team. This is a requirement by the NFL to prevent teams from having an unfair advantage because they have more money. We can see this problem in baseball. The Los Angeles Dodgers have recently been sold to a large group of people for 2 billion dollars. The Packers are a unique situation. The NFL allows the team to stay publicly owned because of the location. If one owner had control over the team they wouldn’t stay in Green Bay. To keep the community afloat the NFL has let the Packers stay publicly owned.

But what does publicly owned mean. It means that people in the community and anyone in the country can support the team. They do this by buying shares of the Packers. These are not the normal kind of shares though. There is no return value. Buying a share of the Packers is just giving them money. Whatever money you spend is gone and now belongs to the Packers. You also don’t technically own any of the team. You have no say in what they do. But what is the point then? Why would people buy shares at all? The money all goes into improvements of Lambeau field. It also again allows the team to stay in Green Bay and not move to a big city. Each shareholder gets a certificate saying that they are an owner of the Green Bay Packers like the one shown below.

People can’t just buy Packers stock whenever they want though. There have been 6 stock releases in the past. These occurred in 1923, 1935, 1950, 1997, 2011, and most recently in November of 2021. Each time the price of a share has changed. In 2011 each share was $250 while the most recent one was $300 per share. 

Being able to stay a publicly owned team is essential to Green Bay. That is why so many people are willing to buy shares. They know they can’t get their money back but they get to keep their team while improving the stadium that they play in.

Work Cited:

Bolluyt, Jess. “Who Owns the Green Bay Packers? Why the Team Is Unique in the NFL.” 

Sportscasting, 9 Sept. 2018, https://www.sportscasting.com/who-owns-the-green-bay-packers/. 

Davenport, Gary. “What Does It Take to Be the Owner of an NFL Franchise?” Bleacher Report, 

Bleacher Report, 3 Oct. 2017, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1690767-what-does-it-take-to-be-the-owner-of-an-nfl-franchise#:~:text=The%20reason%20for%20that%20is,NFL%20gets%20what%20it%20wants. 

Organization, and ImageObject. “Packers Stock Sale Continues with More than 138,000 Shares 

Sold.” Packers Home, 24 Nov. 2021, https://www.packers.com/news/packers-stock-sale-continues-with-more-than-138-000-shares-sold.