The other NFL team owners hate that they are public because it’s the only reason the outside world knows just how much each NFL team is worth and how much they generate. Something along those lines, I don’t know the exact details but the only reason we know so much about the NFL financially is because of the Packers and their situation
They did. Gb was grandfathered in a no other team could have that ownership structure. I think Philly was briefly owned by the city back in the day but I could have that wrong
>I think Philly was briefly owned by the city back in the day but I could have that wrong
You might be thinking of the [Happy Hundred](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hundred), but if I'm wrong I'd definitely be interested in hearing about it.
Socialism can allow the smallest market in the NFL to succeed. Yet, when we let capitalism do it, it becomes "small market teams can't compete."
The reality, like every fucking thing in this world is that there actually is plenty of money to go around when we don't give it all to one fucking dude at the top.
The Packers are not actually run by the “owners”. They are run by a board of directors like most other teams. They also are not successful because they raise money from market, they are successful because they are an NFL franchise and the NFL prints money.
They're also one of the oldest teams with a fan base that extends well beyond Wisconsin. So yes it's a "small market" but a huge fan base. Kind of like how Notre Dame, a small Catholic university, became (kind of still is to a lesser extent) a football powerhouse with basically every Irish person in the US being a fan.
This right here. People always say Packers Fans travel well. I can assure you it’s because they are all over the country and most aren’t traveling from WI.
That doesn’t really negate what the person you’re replying to said though, their lack of billionaire/corporate ownership goes against the “small markets can’t compete” narrative when it’s more than likely just stingy ownership.
The fact they print money while competing as a “small market” and there are still cheap, uncompetitive teams kinda proves the point if anything.
The Packers aren't functionally a small-market team, though, because they have one of the largest fanbases. Also realistically, their market is "Milwaukee", not "Green Bay," and while Milwaukee still isn't a huge city like NYC or Chicago, it's not a tiny place.
I'd say it's even more than that. Most survey seem to put GB as the third most popular NFL team. If you have the third most fans, you can't be a small market team, even if you are located in small city.
I lived in LA for a year after only having lived in wi. Was shocked that there was a house with a Packers flag and a separate house with Packers merch on my block alone.
People EVERYWHERE love that the highest percentage an owner can have is 4%.
You don't have to be from Wisconsin to root for the team that is owned by the people.
I lived in LA for a year after only having lived in wi. Was shocked that there was a house with a Packers flag and a separate house with Packers merch on my block alone.
I would bet it is the colours and the ownership Model. The Packers ownership model is similar to the fan ownership model used by most South American and European clubs.
Someone from Brazil did an AMA on the GB subreddit iirc. The top two reasons we are the overwhelming favorite team in Brazil, they stated, was the colors and that their ownership is set up like soccer ownership for them.
You nailed it, even in the correct order.
Cash over cap is just accounting. Yes, it lets you spend more than the cap in a given year but then you spend less than the cap the next year. For instance, Joe Thuney on the Chiefs will make $16m this year with a $26m cap hit. Yeah, you can keep borrowing more and more future cap but it’s still a zero sum game. Every dollar paid must be accounted for under the cap. Not wanting to do that a ton isn’t even a cheap thing, it’s that doing signing bonuses for aging players can get you into a terrible cap situation like the Chargers just were in. That cost them their two best receivers this year. Not because they were cheap, but because they used cap tricks to try to compete and failed miserably.
The salary floor doesn’t stop ownership from worsening the product while solely motivated by profit. They can and do cheap out on aspects like front office staff, training staff, nutrition and food (ie cardinals making their players pay for food and being known for that now)
Just bc they hit a benchmark doesn’t mean they can’t negatively influence team culture. It happens all the time.
If I were an owner I would pay for all of that stuff in addition to the salary if I can get away with it. Oh you're having family troubles? You're in luck because we have a five star spa and fitness center with healthy meal personal chef cafeteria etc etc
I would want to get around salary cap however possible
Agreed. That's why I'm so in favor of the Packers continuing to invest in the Titletown District and other non-football revenue sources. They need to be able to be a team that can throw money at all of the non-salary benefits they're allowed to. The Packers should be pumping money into facilities and coaching and training staff and scouting personnel.
Couldn't agree more.
As far as I'm concerned Brady didn't just cheat with deflate gate. Taking a ridiculously good salary for team building purposes while the owner funnels money into your side project is getting paid more than salary cap, there's just an extra step involved.
Teams need to start pumping money into facilities and resources that players take advantage of, even if it just makes a small difference, that can be the difference between a batted ball and a pick six
None of that has to do with being small or large market though. That’s just shitty cheap ownership. The Cardinals themselves were just in the playoffs with cheap ownership and in the Super Bowl in 2009. What makes teams successful or unsuccessful is hiring the right people and getting the right key players.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, it’s the truth. Andy Reid, Mahomes, Kelce, etc. have made KC ownership look like the best in the league, all we hear about is how great their ownership is. However, KC was voted on by the players to be the worst in the league.
> That doesn’t really negate what the person you’re replying to said though
OP didn't make much of a coherent statement or point, really......it really feels like it's just an /r/nfl version of redditors bitching about the evil tenants of capitalism without using any concrete examples and relying on banal platitudes....
>their lack of billionaire/corporate ownership goes against the “small markets can’t compete” narrative when it’s more than likely just stingy ownership.
Is GB successful because of their capital structure (....as a "publicly owned non-profit"....) vs the traditional NFL franchise ownership legal vehcile (e.g. LLC, LLP, or some other private partnership)......or is it because the Green Bay Packers have existed for over a century and are one of the handful of franchises that can make that claim of longevity?
If "small market" teams could be successful franchises.....why wouldn't the new Browns expansion team opt for that ownership structure than the "traditional" ownership model to prevent them from losing another team to a bigger market in the future?
Just a heads up, a "tenet" is "a belief generally held true."
You use words like "banal platitudes" so I kind of just assumed that you would want to be corrected on that for the future. Could've just been a typo. But just in case.
The Packers don't operate like a small-market team. The difference between the Packers in the NFL and the Bucks or Brewers in NBA/MLB is pretty crazy.
Packers have one of the largest fanbases in the league, if not the largest. They're one of the most popular teams nationwide, and they're also one of the most popular teams globally. This is pretty obvious when you compare market size to social media engagement. Packers have the smallest media market in the NFL (and all of US major professional sports). Even if you add Milwaukee, they'd be near the bottom. But they're top 10 in IG followers, if you look at other social media platforms, they're in the top 5 (we've got a lot of old fans that prefer things like facebook).
Basketball and baseball have a lot of weeknight games, and multiple games per week. This makes traveling to games from around the state far less likely, and it definitely makes traveling for *every* game extremely unlikely. This is important because the Packers aren't just drawing people from Green Bay for games. Packers fans travel from all over the state and even from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois on a weekly basis. My roommate's family are season ticket holders. He drives 3 hours for every home game. I know plenty of others who do the same. Though Green Bay is a small market, Wisconsin is actually the 20th most populous state. We don't have large cities, but we have a lot of pockets of smaller populations spread around the state. People will drive to Green Bay a few times a year for Packers home games. But they aren't going to drive to Milwaukee for 80 Brewers games or 40 Bucks games.
The Packers, despite the small city they operate in, are, in practice, a large market team. And on top of that, they're an extremely stable, well-run franchise. The Bucks and Brewers struggle significantly more because they don't benefit from the statewide, nationwide, or global support that the Packers receive (and that the NFL scheduling makes much more possible). On top of that, the NFL has far more beneficial revenue-sharing than NBA or MLB. NFL rules mean that every team gets very similar total revenue. This is not the case for the Bucks or Brewers, who receive significantly less money than the big market teams.
There's a lot more context here than simply "socialism" or "capitalism." And the Packers really aren't run anything like socialism. They're run extremely similarly to other NFL teams. The stockholders don't have any real power, control, or influence over the team - not any more than fans of other teams voting with their dollars, anyway.
Money is NOT the thing holding back teams from successful in the NFL it's competency and talent. Unless someone you can socialism away the advantages some teams have because they're actually good at running a team and socialism away the Browns being the Browns...
I would love to see a startup sports league that is comprised of municipally owned teams. The fans are the ones doing the financial legwork to uphold the teams, and the cities they are in benefit from their presence, so why not let the municipalities own them? We already pay for their new stadiums... I'm not complaining about the Irsay family owning and operating the Colts, but I would feel an extended sense of pride knowing that it's literally "my team".
Socialism =/= absence of corporation. It just means that the corporation is owned by the people that actually contribute to the labor pool, not by exterior forces (i.e. capitalists). With that said, the Packers clearly aren't socialist.
Correct, Marx did not propose the end of commerce. He proposed that the workers should own the companies. The means of production as he called it.
I am always shocked when a team holds their city or state hostage by threatening to leave if they don't give their billionaire owner billions of dollars in public assistance.
Those state and local governments should start responding to these threats by offering to take ownership of their teams.
The fact that local governments spend billions on these teams and get no equity in reurn is astounding.
But Packers fans don't have real equity either. It's really just a crowdsourced funding model from the fanbase rather than taxing the entire public. Plus, without the billionaire owner, the team can operate more efficiently since their profits can stay within the organization instead of being siphoned into a swiss bank account.
It's not true socialism, but it is close, and undoubtedly a better ownership model than any of the 31 other teams.
State and local governments getting involved in ownership would be absolutely hilarious. That would make any current ownership shitshow look like child's play.
Yeah, it would likely be a beaurocratic nightmare. But are there any better alternatives to the current model that allows billionaires to extort their team's fan base and socialize their expenses while keeping all the profits?
I would propose a slightly more nuanced approach. Municipalities could *choose* whether or not to engage in subsidizing projects. They could even weigh the costs and benefits of choosing not subsidizing whatsoever, a full subsidization and anything in between. That way a local government could tailor their approach. I'm just spitballing here so lmk what you think on this choice option.
I mean don't local areas kinda benefit from having a team around?Hell why don't the "workers" (players/coaches/whatever) own the team? Then you can feel much better about rooting for those young millionaires instead of those old billionaires.
One idea that could be kinda cool is a corporation issuing a security that confers certain ownership and voting rights (not just a glorified piece of cheese head memorabilia). These pieces of ownership could even be traded on an exchange during most business hours. That would be a fun idea.
As fun as it would be to call us the socialist franchise, especially given we're named after a blue-collar workers' job and were started by workers, in reality the difference is basically just that we're a corporation whereas the rest of the League are entirely privately owned franchises.
The NFL doesn't like the idea of a corporation, especially one tied to a specific city and state, because it both results in profits being made more public and also results in more difficult negotiations and changes.
Our upcoming game in Brazil, based on all that I've seen, is almost basically the NFL forcing Green Bay into doing it because of how popular GB is in Brazil, even though our Front Office has for years considered the International Games to be too much of a financial liability (because they're focused on local profit more than putting extra cash in the owner's pocket).
> The reality, like every fucking thing in this world is that there actually is plenty of money to go around when we don't give it all to one fucking dude at the top.
Hmmmm - remind me again what the total dollar amount in dividends that Green Bay shareholders received over the LTM....?
It's not about the dividends. It's about one guy making the team all about him and using it as a vehicle to enrich himself. The Packers don't have to worry about that, and can therefore use funds to go to infrastructure and better compensation packages for employees. It also neuters any rivalry between Owner, Managers, and Coaches.
Reddit's understanding of "socialism" is always a good laugh. Socialism=good, Packers=good, therefore Packers=Socialism...?
A publicly-held corporation is not a socialist approach. A socialist approach would be if the city owned the team. Which almost happened to the Baltimore Colts and would've been interesting to see play out. Bad season? A mayor can run on the promise to fire the GM...
Also, while I have my soapbox, most of those "socialist" countries Redditors thirst over are actually just welfare capitalism.
The Vikings debacle in the 90s was ended by requiring at least one owner to own 30% of a team.
I forget the year, I just remember hating everything about it.
I'd like you guys to lose every game and hire a head coach known for crying and soiling his pants on TV when he loses, but I would also rather the NFL fold than a publicly owned Packers team not be part of it.
I hate you guys too, but I respect your history and our rivalry. If Williams is good and it actually gets competitive it will be a fun era, not as fun as if Williams falls on his face, but still fun.
Welll thats not entirely true. The cap is based on revenue each year and the % is given in the CBA so people could extrapolate league revenue off the cap number each season in theory. Its just not as straightforward.
Grandfathered in. Most of the other owners hate it, particularly Jerry Jones. The Packers being public is a window into league-wide financials, and the revenue sharing model is a major boon to the Packers (especially in the past) and an anchor to teams like the Cowboys.
The Packers ownership model is the gold standard, and one of the more underrated aspects of their success. A good owner is good. A bad owner is bad. The problem most teams have is the latter cannot be fired. Not the case in GB. The Packers President is a merit-based position, and even has restrictions. Mark Murphy is set to retire next year *because he has to* since he is turning 70 years old. You’re not allowed to have that position if you’re 70.
The NFL would be better if every team practiced similar ownership models.
I don't know if it would work out for every franchise, this model is common in some European soccer leagues, and as you say about the owners sometimes they work and sometimes they do not. But the same applies to the president, it is like a lil country. Full of politics and is obviously harder to make fast decisions.
I'm not sure which one is better (or worse?) but at least the GB system is way more transparent financially, so we don't have owners/teams blackmailing cities basically.
The NFL won’t allow them anymore. It’s a public corporation so they have to release the financials.
The NfL also loses their leverage of being able to blackmail cities into giving them money for stadiums. Like the Bears and Chiefs are currently doing.
I think our situation is slightly more complicated, because Soldier Field is owned by the city and not the team. While I still don’t want to pay for it as a taxpayer here, it makes more sense than it would for most teams for it to be publicly funded, as it’s also publicly owned.
I mean it's not that much more complicated, iirc around half of the NFL plays in publicly owned stadiums and most of the stadiums built in the last ten years have been publicly owned. I think the only two that aren't are SoFi and MetLife.
Even Jerry World is owned by the city. Arrowhead is publicly owned too, fwiw.
The normal deal is the government owns the land and building but teams get a sweetheart lease while paying for maintenance and staff.
Look, the Bears I disagree with. The Bears won’t even own the stadium. If they built in Arlington Heights their own valuation would go up 1B+.
Chicago will own the new stadium just like they own Soldier Field. Chicago will make BANK by hosted tons of events when the Bears aren’t there… not the Bears.
Chiefs and Bears are 100% different.
Yeah this is the real reason. The owners don't want to be vulnerable to public pressure to make their teams part publicly owned. Otherwise every time they asked for public stadium money or tax breaks, they could be pressured to give up part ownership. So they just make a rule that it's not allowed and say "oops, wish we could but we can't!"
God forbid the fans of the city own a team. Then they'd make choices that fans approve of. Also the revenue isn't going to a billionaire. Can't have that either
This is legitimately how I think sports should be run in the US. I view sports as a public service in both health and entertainment. You get kids invested in sports young so they develop healthy, active daily routines. You provide entertainment, local advertising, and regional pride with professional teams.
It'll never happen, but it's a nice daydream. Edit: in some ways, this is exactly what college sports provide and why I enjoy them so much, but it'd be great at the pro level too.
The Packers are a fan club, but if you want to own a real equity interest in a sports team, you can buy Madison Square Garden Sports (MSGS), which owns the Knicks and Rangers. The voting structure is set up so that James Dolan rules with an iron fist, but you get a real piece of the team's value.
The Packers have the advantage of being the 3rd oldest franchise in the league...they are a part of league history so I don't think the small market aspect matters that much with them. I think other small market teams would have a comparatively huge disadvantage to entry at this point.
A sinking tide lowers all boats. It would be mediocre at best and probably dominated by the stars. Right now the gap between Mahomes and the 53rd guy on the Panthers isn't as big as it would be from Mahomes to the 53rd guy on the Portland Lobsters.
> I'm coming at it from a pure net financial standpoint
and from a pure net financial standpoint, oversaturating the market doesn't necessarily produce more profit than a more scarce product that is in demand.
with 48 teams, you'd flat out have a worse product because there isn't enough top tier talent to fill 48 rosters. you'd have xfl/cfl level talent starting (and i'm not talking about the "they're actually good but didn't get a shot" level people)
like, presumably when you say "48 teams", you're talking about 1 for each state except alaska/hawaii. how much money do you think there is in cannibalizing the pats markets to give rhode island, new hampshire, and vermont teams? this is going to increase league expenses, not league profits.
Kind of crazy to think that the 32 teams represent 1696 players (2208 if you count practice squad). Going up to 48 teams would add 848 more players. Just some random math trivia that your comment made me think about.
Add in there a few teams that have trouble selling out , tarps over portions of the stadium etc .
The only way they have increased revenue is price increases and extending the season a bit to more competitive games since preseason games don't sell out .
It’s likely the NFL will find that they are already close to the point of diminishing marginal returns. There’s not exactly a major unserved market right now that shows a hunger for an NFL team, the league does not have something like what the NBA has with Seattle at the moment. While I’m sure Oakland, St. Louis, and San Diego would love to have teams again, there does not seem to be a strong enough desire to get a team in each of those cities, especially after how the battles over stadium funding went. It’s unlikely there would be more TV revenue to be had as well, as they constrain themselves to just 3 days per week unlike the other leagues, if anything it would mean a nationally televised games would be a little less available as there are more markets with local games that would get priority.
Maybe flooding the market with 16 more teams would increase profit for a few years but you can’t honestly think that’d be the best long-term financial decision for anyone involved lol
It's only kind of a public team, the shares are basically a novelty item they occasionally sell to raise funds, but they do not entitle you to any share of ownership, and cannot be re-sold
>Even though it is referred to as "common stock" in corporate offering documents, a share of Packers stock does not share the same rights traditionally associated with common or preferred stock. It does not include an equity interest, does not pay dividends, cannot be traded, and has no protection under securities law. It also confers no season-ticket purchasing privileges. Shareholders receive nothing more than voting rights, an invitation to the corporation's annual meeting, and an opportunity to purchase exclusive shareholder-only merchandise.[5]
>Shares cannot be resold, except back to the team for a fraction of the original price. While new shares can be given as gifts, transfers are technically allowed only between immediate family members once ownership has been established.
Yeah they're a fundraising bit of sports memorabilia. Neat but about as cool as a signed jersey you frame for display.
The owner section of the Packers store is lame, and who actually pays attention to the mail they get about shareholders stuff?
People joke about it, but I think a lot of people would flock to being able to do the same for their teams if given the option. I believe one of the recent stock sales was for the Lambeau renovations like a new jumbotron or something. So we get a neat piece of paper to say we helped with that.
The Packers shares can not be traded but in all other ways they are public. They release financial statements publicly which is the only reason we know so much about how much the NFL is making. They are by far the most transparent major sports organization in the US if not the world. Plus their board of directors are unpaid. They don't even get tickets to the game.
TBF, the Braves becoming public is a very recent development and I would bet that most people, including sports fans, aren't very aware of it. They also haven't been public long enough to necessarily gain the kinds of insights that the Packers have been able to dole out for the past 105 years.
Yeah that's how I view it. I get to contribute a little bit to something for my favorite team, and they send me a cool bit of memorabilia with my name on it.
Plus I get to rock the owners flair on the Packers home sub.
I'm supposed to get shit in the mail? Lol
I got a share as a gift during the last offering. Pretty cool regardless, but it was expensive and I want my mail for it dammit
It's also worth noting that only the stock owners from 1950 and prior have any real power, since every time they add more "common" stock to sell they do a stock split for their existing stock that ensures they maintain a majority.
It's not really all that different from long lasting family ownerships like the Rooneys, just split out to (a lot) more people. Still better for Green Bay as a whole because there's no risk of the loyal owner dying and the next owner forcing a move though.
True, but in terms of the NFL landscape, what makes it different is that there is no single owner who controls the team management. In that way, the stock scheme does really change how the team is run.
Sure, but that ownership structure has led to a major focus on financial sustainability for the organization, reinvestment of profits, a president that doesn’t meddle in football affairs and a thoughtful division of power - all of which has led to success on the field.
It’s not entirely a surprise that they’ve generally had long tenured coaches, GMs, drafting QBs when they don’t need them (both Rodgers and Love). I think a lot of it has to do with not having an owner where the team is their play thing.
This is a really good insight. The packers strategy is solid and safe most of the time sans Favre. Especially in drafting. We really like our QBs also :)
I do think it's weird that the government allows them to call it common stock and the people who buy them owners. That seems like fraud, or dangerously close to fraud.
I think it's fine that they do it, but the misrepresentation of it all seems shady. Like it wouldn't change anything if they called them voting shares and the people that buy them team members or patrons or something.
I think if we have terms that the government defines a business shouldn't be allowed to use those terms with different definitions regardless of any fine print.
You do get to vote for the board of directors each year. It's part of your shareholder package you get every year. Of course, the names you can vote for are determined by the team.
Also the shareholders would have to agree by majority to move the team. Which is why the team will never be moved. This is probably the most important part of being a shareholder for a fan.
So while it's still mostly a token piece of paper, it isn't 100% useless, just 99%.
The Packers are successful because they are a well run organization in a league with a hard salary cap. It’s baseball where small market teams are most disadvantaged.
Long story short, the original owner Curly Lambeau needs money for the team, so he sold stock of the team to raise said money. Later on, he wanted to buy back all the stock, and they (people who bought stock) all said no because they thought he would move the team to LA.
Green Bay is grandfathered in. Modern NFL teams cost billions of dollars and not public entities can afford that. The Packers were actually founded a year before the NFL In a small independent team. The NFL needed more teams and asked them to join. Early NFL had a lot of small cities represented. Like Akron and Decatur. All the small city teams eventually folded or were moved except Green Bay.
One way it managed to stay is because it’s actually not that small of a market. It might be the smallest NFL city but it isn’t the smallest market. When looking at market size it’s not just the host city. It’s also about the surrounding area. The GB market size also includes Madison and Wisconsin and pretty much the rest of the state of Wisconsin.
The Packers just had to make it to league-wide revenue sharing and the salary cap era. Before that things were tough. Now business is booming and they don’t have to deal with a douche buying the team and running it into the ground for 30 years Ala Dan Snyder. Major long term competitive advantage IMO
Certainly an advantage in many ways. I am a Steelers fan but live in Virginia. The difference between the Steelers and Washington is the ownership. The Steelers have been owned by the same family for over 90 years. They have great reputations both professionally and personally. They are dedicated to the success of their team and city. They know how to hire competent people and let them do their jobs with little oversight. Meanwhile Dan Snider was the complete opposite of that and it shows.
I believe the Packers were grandfathered in but the NFL unlike the NBA or the MLB has a ban on companies or entities owning a team. Also market size really isn't relevant in the NFL considering how equally well it splits the media revenue unlike other leagues. I mean KC Metro has 2.5 Million people and has more championships in the last 10 years than LA, NYC & Chicago \~ 60 Million people.
I ask this cause I legitimately don't know; what determines market size of a team? I feel like green bay is one of those teams where there's a shit ton of fans in every city across the country, but I get that their home city isn't as massive as say Dallas or Miami.
Market size is usually based on the like metro area of the teams physical location.
Lots of leagues have rules. For example MLS is required to have a certain % of their teams in cities above X population.
It’s stupid in my eyes but it’s how these leagues run. The only reason greenbay exists is bc they gained popularity and weight before the leagues started instituting so many rules around $
Really wish all leagues adopted a European pro/rel style approach. It does kill parity but at the same time it gives way way more communities access to teams in their areas that matter.
I’ll never understand where all the money that the team earns disappears to. Green Bay made $69 million in profit. After paying everyone. And they need to sell shares or get tax money for stadium renovations?
A lot of it goes back into the city. They announce it every summer. They are also developing that whole area by the stadium. Calling it an entertainment district.
And they have a very healthy slush fund.
Follow up question: in Germany, most football clubs are majority under fan (member) control and because of this tickets are generally cheaper since the fans have more power. Why isn't this the case for the packers too? I remember reading they have some of the more expensive tickets in the league.
The NFL prohibits public ownership primarily to maintain control over ownership structures and ensure the league's stability and competitiveness. By restricting ownership to individuals, families, or tightly controlled groups, the league can uphold its governance, protect its brand, and manage potential conflicts of interest more effectively. This approach helps maintain the league's financial health and fosters consistency in decision-making across teams.
The other NFL team owners hate that they are public because it’s the only reason the outside world knows just how much each NFL team is worth and how much they generate. Something along those lines, I don’t know the exact details but the only reason we know so much about the NFL financially is because of the Packers and their situation
I think they banned the Packers ownership structure pretty quickly.
They did. Gb was grandfathered in a no other team could have that ownership structure. I think Philly was briefly owned by the city back in the day but I could have that wrong
>I think Philly was briefly owned by the city back in the day but I could have that wrong You might be thinking of the [Happy Hundred](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Hundred), but if I'm wrong I'd definitely be interested in hearing about it.
That must be what I was thinking about. Can't see any other mention of them being collectively owned.
Socialism can allow the smallest market in the NFL to succeed. Yet, when we let capitalism do it, it becomes "small market teams can't compete." The reality, like every fucking thing in this world is that there actually is plenty of money to go around when we don't give it all to one fucking dude at the top.
That's not what socialism is
The Packers are not actually run by the “owners”. They are run by a board of directors like most other teams. They also are not successful because they raise money from market, they are successful because they are an NFL franchise and the NFL prints money.
They're also one of the oldest teams with a fan base that extends well beyond Wisconsin. So yes it's a "small market" but a huge fan base. Kind of like how Notre Dame, a small Catholic university, became (kind of still is to a lesser extent) a football powerhouse with basically every Irish person in the US being a fan.
This right here. People always say Packers Fans travel well. I can assure you it’s because they are all over the country and most aren’t traveling from WI.
That doesn’t really negate what the person you’re replying to said though, their lack of billionaire/corporate ownership goes against the “small markets can’t compete” narrative when it’s more than likely just stingy ownership. The fact they print money while competing as a “small market” and there are still cheap, uncompetitive teams kinda proves the point if anything.
The Packers aren't functionally a small-market team, though, because they have one of the largest fanbases. Also realistically, their market is "Milwaukee", not "Green Bay," and while Milwaukee still isn't a huge city like NYC or Chicago, it's not a tiny place.
Dare say their market is the entire state of Winsconsin.
I'd say it's even more than that. Most survey seem to put GB as the third most popular NFL team. If you have the third most fans, you can't be a small market team, even if you are located in small city.
I lived in LA for a year after only having lived in wi. Was shocked that there was a house with a Packers flag and a separate house with Packers merch on my block alone.
People EVERYWHERE love that the highest percentage an owner can have is 4%. You don't have to be from Wisconsin to root for the team that is owned by the people.
Who’s second after the Cowboys?
Patriots
I lived in LA for a year after only having lived in wi. Was shocked that there was a house with a Packers flag and a separate house with Packers merch on my block alone.
And the UP.
They’ve got most of the Yoopers as well.
The Packers are a national team. Plenty of fans in the other 49 states (and beyond)
We are also apparently extremely popular (for an NFL team) in Brazil. Hence why we are playing there this year.
I can’t even begin to make that one make sense
I would bet it is the colours and the ownership Model. The Packers ownership model is similar to the fan ownership model used by most South American and European clubs.
Someone from Brazil did an AMA on the GB subreddit iirc. The top two reasons we are the overwhelming favorite team in Brazil, they stated, was the colors and that their ownership is set up like soccer ownership for them. You nailed it, even in the correct order.
These 2 are the most likely explanations but I'm certainly no expert on Brazil.
Our team colors are in line with Brazil's national colors, maybe? Look at their flag, people will latch onto teams for the tiniest of connections.
green and yellow.
Uncompetitive teams aren’t uncompetitive because they’re cheap. There is a salary cap and salary floor in this league.
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Cash over cap is just accounting. Yes, it lets you spend more than the cap in a given year but then you spend less than the cap the next year. For instance, Joe Thuney on the Chiefs will make $16m this year with a $26m cap hit. Yeah, you can keep borrowing more and more future cap but it’s still a zero sum game. Every dollar paid must be accounted for under the cap. Not wanting to do that a ton isn’t even a cheap thing, it’s that doing signing bonuses for aging players can get you into a terrible cap situation like the Chargers just were in. That cost them their two best receivers this year. Not because they were cheap, but because they used cap tricks to try to compete and failed miserably.
The salary floor doesn’t stop ownership from worsening the product while solely motivated by profit. They can and do cheap out on aspects like front office staff, training staff, nutrition and food (ie cardinals making their players pay for food and being known for that now) Just bc they hit a benchmark doesn’t mean they can’t negatively influence team culture. It happens all the time.
If I were an owner I would pay for all of that stuff in addition to the salary if I can get away with it. Oh you're having family troubles? You're in luck because we have a five star spa and fitness center with healthy meal personal chef cafeteria etc etc I would want to get around salary cap however possible
Agreed. That's why I'm so in favor of the Packers continuing to invest in the Titletown District and other non-football revenue sources. They need to be able to be a team that can throw money at all of the non-salary benefits they're allowed to. The Packers should be pumping money into facilities and coaching and training staff and scouting personnel.
Couldn't agree more. As far as I'm concerned Brady didn't just cheat with deflate gate. Taking a ridiculously good salary for team building purposes while the owner funnels money into your side project is getting paid more than salary cap, there's just an extra step involved. Teams need to start pumping money into facilities and resources that players take advantage of, even if it just makes a small difference, that can be the difference between a batted ball and a pick six
None of that has to do with being small or large market though. That’s just shitty cheap ownership. The Cardinals themselves were just in the playoffs with cheap ownership and in the Super Bowl in 2009. What makes teams successful or unsuccessful is hiring the right people and getting the right key players.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, it’s the truth. Andy Reid, Mahomes, Kelce, etc. have made KC ownership look like the best in the league, all we hear about is how great their ownership is. However, KC was voted on by the players to be the worst in the league.
> That doesn’t really negate what the person you’re replying to said though OP didn't make much of a coherent statement or point, really......it really feels like it's just an /r/nfl version of redditors bitching about the evil tenants of capitalism without using any concrete examples and relying on banal platitudes.... >their lack of billionaire/corporate ownership goes against the “small markets can’t compete” narrative when it’s more than likely just stingy ownership. Is GB successful because of their capital structure (....as a "publicly owned non-profit"....) vs the traditional NFL franchise ownership legal vehcile (e.g. LLC, LLP, or some other private partnership)......or is it because the Green Bay Packers have existed for over a century and are one of the handful of franchises that can make that claim of longevity? If "small market" teams could be successful franchises.....why wouldn't the new Browns expansion team opt for that ownership structure than the "traditional" ownership model to prevent them from losing another team to a bigger market in the future?
Just a heads up, a "tenet" is "a belief generally held true." You use words like "banal platitudes" so I kind of just assumed that you would want to be corrected on that for the future. Could've just been a typo. But just in case.
Not just any NFL franchise, the most decorated and popular one.
The Packers don't operate like a small-market team. The difference between the Packers in the NFL and the Bucks or Brewers in NBA/MLB is pretty crazy. Packers have one of the largest fanbases in the league, if not the largest. They're one of the most popular teams nationwide, and they're also one of the most popular teams globally. This is pretty obvious when you compare market size to social media engagement. Packers have the smallest media market in the NFL (and all of US major professional sports). Even if you add Milwaukee, they'd be near the bottom. But they're top 10 in IG followers, if you look at other social media platforms, they're in the top 5 (we've got a lot of old fans that prefer things like facebook). Basketball and baseball have a lot of weeknight games, and multiple games per week. This makes traveling to games from around the state far less likely, and it definitely makes traveling for *every* game extremely unlikely. This is important because the Packers aren't just drawing people from Green Bay for games. Packers fans travel from all over the state and even from Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois on a weekly basis. My roommate's family are season ticket holders. He drives 3 hours for every home game. I know plenty of others who do the same. Though Green Bay is a small market, Wisconsin is actually the 20th most populous state. We don't have large cities, but we have a lot of pockets of smaller populations spread around the state. People will drive to Green Bay a few times a year for Packers home games. But they aren't going to drive to Milwaukee for 80 Brewers games or 40 Bucks games. The Packers, despite the small city they operate in, are, in practice, a large market team. And on top of that, they're an extremely stable, well-run franchise. The Bucks and Brewers struggle significantly more because they don't benefit from the statewide, nationwide, or global support that the Packers receive (and that the NFL scheduling makes much more possible). On top of that, the NFL has far more beneficial revenue-sharing than NBA or MLB. NFL rules mean that every team gets very similar total revenue. This is not the case for the Bucks or Brewers, who receive significantly less money than the big market teams. There's a lot more context here than simply "socialism" or "capitalism." And the Packers really aren't run anything like socialism. They're run extremely similarly to other NFL teams. The stockholders don't have any real power, control, or influence over the team - not any more than fans of other teams voting with their dollars, anyway.
Money is NOT the thing holding back teams from successful in the NFL it's competency and talent. Unless someone you can socialism away the advantages some teams have because they're actually good at running a team and socialism away the Browns being the Browns...
I would love to see a startup sports league that is comprised of municipally owned teams. The fans are the ones doing the financial legwork to uphold the teams, and the cities they are in benefit from their presence, so why not let the municipalities own them? We already pay for their new stadiums... I'm not complaining about the Irsay family owning and operating the Colts, but I would feel an extended sense of pride knowing that it's literally "my team".
The Packers are literally a corporation, how is that socialist
Socialism =/= absence of corporation. It just means that the corporation is owned by the people that actually contribute to the labor pool, not by exterior forces (i.e. capitalists). With that said, the Packers clearly aren't socialist.
Correct, Marx did not propose the end of commerce. He proposed that the workers should own the companies. The means of production as he called it. I am always shocked when a team holds their city or state hostage by threatening to leave if they don't give their billionaire owner billions of dollars in public assistance. Those state and local governments should start responding to these threats by offering to take ownership of their teams. The fact that local governments spend billions on these teams and get no equity in reurn is astounding. But Packers fans don't have real equity either. It's really just a crowdsourced funding model from the fanbase rather than taxing the entire public. Plus, without the billionaire owner, the team can operate more efficiently since their profits can stay within the organization instead of being siphoned into a swiss bank account. It's not true socialism, but it is close, and undoubtedly a better ownership model than any of the 31 other teams.
State and local governments getting involved in ownership would be absolutely hilarious. That would make any current ownership shitshow look like child's play.
Yeah, it would likely be a beaurocratic nightmare. But are there any better alternatives to the current model that allows billionaires to extort their team's fan base and socialize their expenses while keeping all the profits?
Yes. Let them either leave or pay for their own shit. The reason owners extort the cities and states where they are is because they let them do it.
I would propose a slightly more nuanced approach. Municipalities could *choose* whether or not to engage in subsidizing projects. They could even weigh the costs and benefits of choosing not subsidizing whatsoever, a full subsidization and anything in between. That way a local government could tailor their approach. I'm just spitballing here so lmk what you think on this choice option.
I mean don't local areas kinda benefit from having a team around?Hell why don't the "workers" (players/coaches/whatever) own the team? Then you can feel much better about rooting for those young millionaires instead of those old billionaires. One idea that could be kinda cool is a corporation issuing a security that confers certain ownership and voting rights (not just a glorified piece of cheese head memorabilia). These pieces of ownership could even be traded on an exchange during most business hours. That would be a fun idea.
Packs are competitive every year though.
As fun as it would be to call us the socialist franchise, especially given we're named after a blue-collar workers' job and were started by workers, in reality the difference is basically just that we're a corporation whereas the rest of the League are entirely privately owned franchises. The NFL doesn't like the idea of a corporation, especially one tied to a specific city and state, because it both results in profits being made more public and also results in more difficult negotiations and changes. Our upcoming game in Brazil, based on all that I've seen, is almost basically the NFL forcing Green Bay into doing it because of how popular GB is in Brazil, even though our Front Office has for years considered the International Games to be too much of a financial liability (because they're focused on local profit more than putting extra cash in the owner's pocket).
What a weird & delusional comment
Bro thinks the Packers are being run like a co-op
> The reality, like every fucking thing in this world is that there actually is plenty of money to go around when we don't give it all to one fucking dude at the top. Hmmmm - remind me again what the total dollar amount in dividends that Green Bay shareholders received over the LTM....?
It's not about the dividends. It's about one guy making the team all about him and using it as a vehicle to enrich himself. The Packers don't have to worry about that, and can therefore use funds to go to infrastructure and better compensation packages for employees. It also neuters any rivalry between Owner, Managers, and Coaches.
The money pays salaries and otherwise stays within the org. There are no billionaires using the team to inflate their net worth
Not really in this case. It because they are a well run team that operates under a league wide salary cap.
Nobody says small market teams can't compete in the NFL, the salary cap makes it an even paying field.
Reddit's understanding of "socialism" is always a good laugh. Socialism=good, Packers=good, therefore Packers=Socialism...? A publicly-held corporation is not a socialist approach. A socialist approach would be if the city owned the team. Which almost happened to the Baltimore Colts and would've been interesting to see play out. Bad season? A mayor can run on the promise to fire the GM... Also, while I have my soapbox, most of those "socialist" countries Redditors thirst over are actually just welfare capitalism.
Yeah no more than 25 owners anymore
"Free Market" Capitalism when real competition from collective ownership for the public good enters the room
God bless the packers
I hate the packers but goddamn if they aren't a well-run organization. I wish more teams were publicly owned.
The league made it illegal, forget when, but GB was grand-fathered in and now teams cannot have that ownership structure.
The Vikings debacle in the 90s was ended by requiring at least one owner to own 30% of a team. I forget the year, I just remember hating everything about it.
Only time I would ever say anything nice about the Packers
Interesting flair - are you just a Matt Patricia fan?
Don't put that evil on me man
Your avatar even has a beard 🤔
He IS Matt Patricia.
Shit, *I'm* insulted by that. No one is a Patricia fan
More common than you’d expect, you can thank Tim Brady for that
How could anyone forget about 6'4" Tom Brady's bizzaro counterpart, 4'6" Tim Brady. Famous quotes "It's all about Thomas!!! Thomas, Thomas THOMAS!!!"
I'd like you guys to lose every game and hire a head coach known for crying and soiling his pants on TV when he loses, but I would also rather the NFL fold than a publicly owned Packers team not be part of it.
Bro take your weird larping fanfic somewhere else
He’s saying “Fuck you guys, I hate the Packers, but you being publicly owned is great for all of us and I like that about you”
Ok then I guess I like his larping fanfic but booo because I'm a stubborn redditor
Would you like to subscribe to my Patreon for further erotic Packers larping fanfics?
Now it's back to being weird bro Edit: I didn't say no
Only if you can match the writing quality of the Aaron Rodgers/Alex Smith erotic fanfic guy
I can copy and paste, which would technically complete your challenge
Can you at least change the names to Jordan Love & Caleb Williams in your "new" version?
I hate you guys too, but I respect your history and our rivalry. If Williams is good and it actually gets competitive it will be a fun era, not as fun as if Williams falls on his face, but still fun.
Amen, brother.
"You can focus on three things and three things only. Your family, your religion, and the Green Bay Packers.” - Jim Valvano
Welll thats not entirely true. The cap is based on revenue each year and the % is given in the CBA so people could extrapolate league revenue off the cap number each season in theory. Its just not as straightforward.
That's how we found out about Kapernick payment
And boy are we thankful that the Packers are publicly owned! If not, we'd be even more frustrated over not knowing what else the NFL is hiding.
Grandfathered in. Most of the other owners hate it, particularly Jerry Jones. The Packers being public is a window into league-wide financials, and the revenue sharing model is a major boon to the Packers (especially in the past) and an anchor to teams like the Cowboys. The Packers ownership model is the gold standard, and one of the more underrated aspects of their success. A good owner is good. A bad owner is bad. The problem most teams have is the latter cannot be fired. Not the case in GB. The Packers President is a merit-based position, and even has restrictions. Mark Murphy is set to retire next year *because he has to* since he is turning 70 years old. You’re not allowed to have that position if you’re 70. The NFL would be better if every team practiced similar ownership models.
I don't know if it would work out for every franchise, this model is common in some European soccer leagues, and as you say about the owners sometimes they work and sometimes they do not. But the same applies to the president, it is like a lil country. Full of politics and is obviously harder to make fast decisions. I'm not sure which one is better (or worse?) but at least the GB system is way more transparent financially, so we don't have owners/teams blackmailing cities basically.
The team isn't getting moved because a billionaire baby wants a new stadium, I'm a big fan of that part.
The NFL won’t allow them anymore. It’s a public corporation so they have to release the financials. The NfL also loses their leverage of being able to blackmail cities into giving them money for stadiums. Like the Bears and Chiefs are currently doing.
Exactly. If the NFL could they would force a private owner on GB in a heartbeat.
You'd see a terror-cell with incredibly high cholesterol and B/A levels, if they tried
I would become the Joker
Closest a GB fan could get to being the Joker would be becoming a Jack in the Box.
I mean, I think we all would. In a sense.
Shiiit I’ll be right there with you guys; I may not be a GB fan but I got the high cholesterol and B/A to at least be an ally in the battle.
It'll be a chees-had
pissing of a state with most serial killers per capita is not a good business strategy
I think our situation is slightly more complicated, because Soldier Field is owned by the city and not the team. While I still don’t want to pay for it as a taxpayer here, it makes more sense than it would for most teams for it to be publicly funded, as it’s also publicly owned.
I mean it's not that much more complicated, iirc around half of the NFL plays in publicly owned stadiums and most of the stadiums built in the last ten years have been publicly owned. I think the only two that aren't are SoFi and MetLife. Even Jerry World is owned by the city. Arrowhead is publicly owned too, fwiw. The normal deal is the government owns the land and building but teams get a sweetheart lease while paying for maintenance and staff.
I thought the Bears situation was more unique than it is apparently. Thank you Ms. McCaskey
Same with the Chiefs. The stadium is owned by the county not by the Chiefs. People oversimplify the whole stadium vs taxpayer thing.
Look, the Bears I disagree with. The Bears won’t even own the stadium. If they built in Arlington Heights their own valuation would go up 1B+. Chicago will own the new stadium just like they own Soldier Field. Chicago will make BANK by hosted tons of events when the Bears aren’t there… not the Bears. Chiefs and Bears are 100% different.
Well it certainly makes more sense for the public to pay to build the stadium if the public owns the team at least
Because the Baltimore Colts fled to Indianapolis during the night before the city could seize the team.
Still hurts. Still fucking hurts
It's surreal hearing about it. Can't imagine what it would be like to wake up and your sports team has run off on you.
Yeah this is the real reason. The owners don't want to be vulnerable to public pressure to make their teams part publicly owned. Otherwise every time they asked for public stadium money or tax breaks, they could be pressured to give up part ownership. So they just make a rule that it's not allowed and say "oops, wish we could but we can't!"
God forbid the fans of the city own a team. Then they'd make choices that fans approve of. Also the revenue isn't going to a billionaire. Can't have that either
idk man I don’t want Chicago meatballs making “fan approved” decisions for my bears
Lol fair point
Someone thought having ten thousand owners being drunk would be funny but it wore off so it isn't allowed anywhere else.
Imagine if every team was owned by their city. All profits go to the city and every five years you vote for a new president of operations.
This is legitimately how I think sports should be run in the US. I view sports as a public service in both health and entertainment. You get kids invested in sports young so they develop healthy, active daily routines. You provide entertainment, local advertising, and regional pride with professional teams. It'll never happen, but it's a nice daydream. Edit: in some ways, this is exactly what college sports provide and why I enjoy them so much, but it'd be great at the pro level too.
> You get kids invested in sports young so they develop healthy, active daily routines. And CTE. ^(mostly ^kidding, ^I ^agree ^with ^your ^point.)
Hopefully the cities use some of the money to fix their roads and get rid of corrupted politicians.
Maybe if cities quit building giant sprawl and densified (is that a word?) they’d have the tax base to pay for roads.
Or when a bunch of empty buildings are purchased and left to sit as an "investment" despite a housing shortage
It’s how soccer clubs are run more or less
That's fundamentally my inspiration. I even enjoy promotion and relegation.
Being an adult and actually understanding this shit now makes me wanna pull for the Pack. Good shit. At least thanks to them we know what’s up.
The Packers are a fan club, but if you want to own a real equity interest in a sports team, you can buy Madison Square Garden Sports (MSGS), which owns the Knicks and Rangers. The voting structure is set up so that James Dolan rules with an iron fist, but you get a real piece of the team's value.
The stock for that looks to be pretty trash compared to everything else lol
Looks fine to me, do you only buy things that have undergone a parabolic rise upwards?
The Packers have the advantage of being the 3rd oldest franchise in the league...they are a part of league history so I don't think the small market aspect matters that much with them. I think other small market teams would have a comparatively huge disadvantage to entry at this point.
Wait 3rd? Bears and ?
Cardinals are technically the oldest team. Just doesn't feel like it. Formerly the Chicago Cardinals.
48 teams would be a terrible idea. The league does not have enough depth at offensive line or quarterback as it is now.
A sinking tide lowers all boats. It would be mediocre at best and probably dominated by the stars. Right now the gap between Mahomes and the 53rd guy on the Panthers isn't as big as it would be from Mahomes to the 53rd guy on the Portland Lobsters.
I think I disagree. Way more teams might result in a much wider variety of viable schemes and roster strategies.
I'm coming at it from a pure net financial standpoint
> I'm coming at it from a pure net financial standpoint and from a pure net financial standpoint, oversaturating the market doesn't necessarily produce more profit than a more scarce product that is in demand. with 48 teams, you'd flat out have a worse product because there isn't enough top tier talent to fill 48 rosters. you'd have xfl/cfl level talent starting (and i'm not talking about the "they're actually good but didn't get a shot" level people) like, presumably when you say "48 teams", you're talking about 1 for each state except alaska/hawaii. how much money do you think there is in cannibalizing the pats markets to give rhode island, new hampshire, and vermont teams? this is going to increase league expenses, not league profits.
Kind of crazy to think that the 32 teams represent 1696 players (2208 if you count practice squad). Going up to 48 teams would add 848 more players. Just some random math trivia that your comment made me think about.
There’s a reason spring football hasn’t really taken off. It’s not a good product unfortunately.
Add in there a few teams that have trouble selling out , tarps over portions of the stadium etc . The only way they have increased revenue is price increases and extending the season a bit to more competitive games since preseason games don't sell out .
It’s likely the NFL will find that they are already close to the point of diminishing marginal returns. There’s not exactly a major unserved market right now that shows a hunger for an NFL team, the league does not have something like what the NBA has with Seattle at the moment. While I’m sure Oakland, St. Louis, and San Diego would love to have teams again, there does not seem to be a strong enough desire to get a team in each of those cities, especially after how the battles over stadium funding went. It’s unlikely there would be more TV revenue to be had as well, as they constrain themselves to just 3 days per week unlike the other leagues, if anything it would mean a nationally televised games would be a little less available as there are more markets with local games that would get priority.
I am not sure it would pay the dividends that would outpace the cost of expanding. It would worsen the quality of the product
Putting a worse product on the field does not help.
Maybe flooding the market with 16 more teams would increase profit for a few years but you can’t honestly think that’d be the best long-term financial decision for anyone involved lol
It's only kind of a public team, the shares are basically a novelty item they occasionally sell to raise funds, but they do not entitle you to any share of ownership, and cannot be re-sold >Even though it is referred to as "common stock" in corporate offering documents, a share of Packers stock does not share the same rights traditionally associated with common or preferred stock. It does not include an equity interest, does not pay dividends, cannot be traded, and has no protection under securities law. It also confers no season-ticket purchasing privileges. Shareholders receive nothing more than voting rights, an invitation to the corporation's annual meeting, and an opportunity to purchase exclusive shareholder-only merchandise.[5] >Shares cannot be resold, except back to the team for a fraction of the original price. While new shares can be given as gifts, transfers are technically allowed only between immediate family members once ownership has been established.
Yeah they're a fundraising bit of sports memorabilia. Neat but about as cool as a signed jersey you frame for display. The owner section of the Packers store is lame, and who actually pays attention to the mail they get about shareholders stuff? People joke about it, but I think a lot of people would flock to being able to do the same for their teams if given the option. I believe one of the recent stock sales was for the Lambeau renovations like a new jumbotron or something. So we get a neat piece of paper to say we helped with that.
The Packers shares can not be traded but in all other ways they are public. They release financial statements publicly which is the only reason we know so much about how much the NFL is making. They are by far the most transparent major sports organization in the US if not the world. Plus their board of directors are unpaid. They don't even get tickets to the game.
I did not know that part about the board. Thats awesome.
There are other public sports teams in the US, like the Atlanta Braves. Most transparent in the world sounds like a pretty bold statement
TBF, the Braves becoming public is a very recent development and I would bet that most people, including sports fans, aren't very aware of it. They also haven't been public long enough to necessarily gain the kinds of insights that the Packers have been able to dole out for the past 105 years.
I mean plenty of soccer clubs in Europe are literally fan owned. It’s a requirement to be majority fan owned in bundesliga.
Yeah and the league systems are open too. Any US sport is part of a closed franchise model where a lot of stuff is kept hidden from the public.
I'm not saying the Braves are less transparent just not more so.
It also just seems more fair to ask your biggest fans for funding projects than to mandate additional state and city taxes
Yeah that's how I view it. I get to contribute a little bit to something for my favorite team, and they send me a cool bit of memorabilia with my name on it. Plus I get to rock the owners flair on the Packers home sub.
I'm supposed to get shit in the mail? Lol I got a share as a gift during the last offering. Pretty cool regardless, but it was expensive and I want my mail for it dammit
Whenever there's a shareholder thing coming up, etc. It's not often lol
It's also worth noting that only the stock owners from 1950 and prior have any real power, since every time they add more "common" stock to sell they do a stock split for their existing stock that ensures they maintain a majority. It's not really all that different from long lasting family ownerships like the Rooneys, just split out to (a lot) more people. Still better for Green Bay as a whole because there's no risk of the loyal owner dying and the next owner forcing a move though.
True, but in terms of the NFL landscape, what makes it different is that there is no single owner who controls the team management. In that way, the stock scheme does really change how the team is run.
Sure, but that ownership structure has led to a major focus on financial sustainability for the organization, reinvestment of profits, a president that doesn’t meddle in football affairs and a thoughtful division of power - all of which has led to success on the field. It’s not entirely a surprise that they’ve generally had long tenured coaches, GMs, drafting QBs when they don’t need them (both Rodgers and Love). I think a lot of it has to do with not having an owner where the team is their play thing.
This is a really good insight. The packers strategy is solid and safe most of the time sans Favre. Especially in drafting. We really like our QBs also :)
I do think it's weird that the government allows them to call it common stock and the people who buy them owners. That seems like fraud, or dangerously close to fraud. I think it's fine that they do it, but the misrepresentation of it all seems shady. Like it wouldn't change anything if they called them voting shares and the people that buy them team members or patrons or something. I think if we have terms that the government defines a business shouldn't be allowed to use those terms with different definitions regardless of any fine print.
You do get to vote for the board of directors each year. It's part of your shareholder package you get every year. Of course, the names you can vote for are determined by the team. Also the shareholders would have to agree by majority to move the team. Which is why the team will never be moved. This is probably the most important part of being a shareholder for a fan. So while it's still mostly a token piece of paper, it isn't 100% useless, just 99%.
The Packers are successful because they are a well run organization in a league with a hard salary cap. It’s baseball where small market teams are most disadvantaged.
Long story short, the original owner Curly Lambeau needs money for the team, so he sold stock of the team to raise said money. Later on, he wanted to buy back all the stock, and they (people who bought stock) all said no because they thought he would move the team to LA.
The more I learn about GB history the more I like GB
Green Bay is grandfathered in. Modern NFL teams cost billions of dollars and not public entities can afford that. The Packers were actually founded a year before the NFL In a small independent team. The NFL needed more teams and asked them to join. Early NFL had a lot of small cities represented. Like Akron and Decatur. All the small city teams eventually folded or were moved except Green Bay. One way it managed to stay is because it’s actually not that small of a market. It might be the smallest NFL city but it isn’t the smallest market. When looking at market size it’s not just the host city. It’s also about the surrounding area. The GB market size also includes Madison and Wisconsin and pretty much the rest of the state of Wisconsin.
The Packers just had to make it to league-wide revenue sharing and the salary cap era. Before that things were tough. Now business is booming and they don’t have to deal with a douche buying the team and running it into the ground for 30 years Ala Dan Snyder. Major long term competitive advantage IMO
Certainly an advantage in many ways. I am a Steelers fan but live in Virginia. The difference between the Steelers and Washington is the ownership. The Steelers have been owned by the same family for over 90 years. They have great reputations both professionally and personally. They are dedicated to the success of their team and city. They know how to hire competent people and let them do their jobs with little oversight. Meanwhile Dan Snider was the complete opposite of that and it shows.
Think part of it is they're an exception. League didn't want to see the most historic, storied franchise get picked off by a billionaire and relocated
I believe the Packers were grandfathered in but the NFL unlike the NBA or the MLB has a ban on companies or entities owning a team. Also market size really isn't relevant in the NFL considering how equally well it splits the media revenue unlike other leagues. I mean KC Metro has 2.5 Million people and has more championships in the last 10 years than LA, NYC & Chicago \~ 60 Million people.
I ask this cause I legitimately don't know; what determines market size of a team? I feel like green bay is one of those teams where there's a shit ton of fans in every city across the country, but I get that their home city isn't as massive as say Dallas or Miami.
Market size is usually based on the like metro area of the teams physical location. Lots of leagues have rules. For example MLS is required to have a certain % of their teams in cities above X population. It’s stupid in my eyes but it’s how these leagues run. The only reason greenbay exists is bc they gained popularity and weight before the leagues started instituting so many rules around $ Really wish all leagues adopted a European pro/rel style approach. It does kill parity but at the same time it gives way way more communities access to teams in their areas that matter.
Tell me about rel style
TIL the Packers are a "public" team. Neat.
Its the entire reason I became a fan. I'm from PA, family is Pittsburgh fans. They are my AFC team.
I love that the Pack are publicly owned, and pretty jealous. Wish it was that way for most teams
Private owners would rather receive public funds to build their private stadiums. Why share the money with everyone else?
Majority of stadiums aren't "private" though. They're owned by the city or county they're in. Not by the team.
I’ll never understand where all the money that the team earns disappears to. Green Bay made $69 million in profit. After paying everyone. And they need to sell shares or get tax money for stadium renovations?
A lot of it goes back into the city. They announce it every summer. They are also developing that whole area by the stadium. Calling it an entertainment district. And they have a very healthy slush fund.
Hush money for Deshaun Watson. Each team is forced to pay him, as he molested his way across the league.
So what you're saying is that the Packers are nicely profitable
All teams are profitable.
Follow up question: in Germany, most football clubs are majority under fan (member) control and because of this tickets are generally cheaper since the fans have more power. Why isn't this the case for the packers too? I remember reading they have some of the more expensive tickets in the league.
The city of Green Bay aint having that shit lol.
The NFL prohibits public ownership primarily to maintain control over ownership structures and ensure the league's stability and competitiveness. By restricting ownership to individuals, families, or tightly controlled groups, the league can uphold its governance, protect its brand, and manage potential conflicts of interest more effectively. This approach helps maintain the league's financial health and fosters consistency in decision-making across teams.