Jeff Robinson | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
Only one National Football League team has an ownership structure that resembles a publicly traded company.
The Green Bay Packers, the 12th most valuable NFL franchise at $6.3 billion according to CNBC’s Official NFL Team Valuations for 2024, are the only publicly traded team in North America’s four major professional sports leagues. The franchise is wholly owned by shareholders, many of them Packers fans, in a structure established more than 100 years ago.
The Packers have had six stock offerings — which began in 1923, 1935, 1950, 1997, 2011, 2021 — resulting in more than 5.2 million shares owned by more than 538,000 people, according to 2024 team media guide.
The shares do not pay a dividend, are not transferable except through transfer to a child or relative, and have no intrinsic market value. Shareholders can attend the group’s annual meeting and vote for a board of directors, but the group says owners do not reap any financial benefits from ownership. The only way a shareholder receives money is to sell their share back to the group, even for a percentage of the original share price.
For 2023, the group took in $638 million in revenue and its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were $128 million. The Packers are a nonprofit organization, and the only member of the team’s seven-member executive committee who receives compensation is the chairman.
The Packers’ annual revenue goes toward paying players, maintaining Lambeau Field and marketing, among other expenses. Equity offerings over the years have been used to get the team out of difficult financial situations and make major renovations to Lambeau Field.
The unique structure puts the Packers among the teams that newly approved private equity investors will be least interested in. Even deep-pocketed investors can’t use their capital to generate returns.
There is an ownership limit of 200,000 shares per person — less than 4% of the group’s outstanding shares. Current rules allow approved private equity firms to own up to 10 percent of a franchise, but even if the Packers wanted a firm to own that much of the team, it’s unlikely to attract private equity investors.
Since stock offers are so rare, The biggest obstacle for Packers fans to owning a piece of the team isn’t money — it’s timing.
In the first offering in 1923, a share cost $5. While the price has risen over the years to as much as $300 for an offer starting in 2021, it’s still a small fraction of the $6.49 billion average valuation of an NFL team today.
The unique ownership structure is one of the many ways the Packers stand out in the NFL. Green Bay is the smallest television market of any of the 32 teams and does not receive the high level of tourism that other cities with NFL teams such as Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Los Angeles receive.
It also often draws the ire of other fans and organizations because of its long-term stability at quarterback as the team went from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love.
The Packers open their season Friday against the Philadelphia Eagles led by Love, who recently signed a four-year, $220 million extension with the organization.
