What does it mean that the community owns the Packers?

November 1, 2009 1:42 PM

Green Bay Packer fans love to point out that the Packers are the only community-owned professional sports team. Are there any actual benefits to this? Does it mean anything?

Are the citizens of Green Bay allowed to cast a vote on team operations? Do they receive dividends of some kind? Can they sell their 'share' in the team?

posted by xmutex to sports, hobbies, & recreation (14 comments total)

The team is a publicly held company. Shareholders have rights just like any other shareholders, and the team is run by a board of directors, like any other public company. So yes, the fans can own shares and have a tiny tiny vote in electing the board, but the "community-owned" thing is basically a myth to propagate their "gee whiz small town white America" image.
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:54 PM on November 1

From a non-US perspective, this is not an unusual situation. This brief Guardian article gives a flavour of the owndership structure of some of the major European football (i.e soccer) clubs.

Barcelona belongs to and is run by its 102,000 members. Every four years they choose a president and a board of directors who manage the club; they have the right to speak and to vote.

Nor are they alone in Spain. Athletic Bilbao, Osasuna and Real Madrid are also democratic/mutual organisations, who hold quadrennial elections allowing their members to help determine the future direction of the club.

Most German clubs are structured as members' clubs with a supervisory board elected by members, who are match-going fans. That board generally selects the make-up of the management board that runs the club on a day-to-day basis and is responsible for the football and non-football sides of club activities.

Of the top division in the Bundesliga, six clubs including SV Hamburg and Schalke, now second and fourth in the table, are purely member associations. Interestingly, the one club that has got into debt is Borussia Dortmund, now stock-exchange listed, who plummeted from European champions in 1997 to near-extinction in 2005.
posted by Jakey at 2:03 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]

It keeps a major sports franchise in a city of 100,000 people with no real suburbs. That's a giant benefit.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:22 PM on November 1 [5 favorites]

In other words, the Packers are as community-owned as, say, AT&T. Except that AT&T pays dividends, their stock can appreciate in value, institutional investors can at least put some pressure on the corporation by virtue of their large holdings, and AT&T used to send out free 10 minute calling cards with their annual reports in the olden days. I'd say drjimmy11 is right, when "less democratic than AT&T" is your motto, being community-owned is essentially meaningless.
posted by zachlipton at 2:27 PM on November 1

Some resources (from a pro-community-ownership perspective) from a think tank (I worked there a very long time ago which is why I'm aware they'd done some research on the topic but I have no current association with them and haven't studied the issue enough to have a strong opinion on it myself). The Packers are discussed under the "examples" section. A few other articles promotion community owned sports from the same source: 1, 2, 3.
posted by nanojath at 2:30 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]

The only really important benefit is that the team can't leave.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:06 PM on November 1 [2 favorites]

I need to underscore what Ironmouth touched on. The ONLY reason the Green Bay Packers are still in Green Bay is because of this unique ownership situation. If there had been a truly private ownership group, they would have moved decades ago, to just about any other city in the U.S. with a big enough stadium.

At one point, Los Angeles, the second-largest television market in the country, has two empty NFL-ready stadiums (Coliseum, Rose Bowl), and had a third available for several years (Anaheim). Moving the Packers has never been an idea on the table, while several other teams have threatened a move in order to gain leverage against their current stadium leases.

The ownership is literally unique, too. The NFL has internal rules barring this ownership arrangement from being repeated.

Green Bay also benefits from this system from a marketing standpoint. There are many people that support the team and buy its gear merely because the team is viewed as the "least evil" of the teams, from a business perspective.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:09 PM on November 1 [3 favorites]

It's actually different from AT&T (or other publicly-traded corporations) in a couple of ways. They're incorporated as a non-profit, which means that they don't issue dividends, and also that there's not an owner or ownership group treating the team as an asset to be sold or making decisions that make money but yield a crappy team. (ask fans of teams like the Clippers, Grizzlies, and Nets how they like that ownership style) They also restrict anyone from owning more than 200 shares, to prevent one person from having a controlling ownership.

Thirded that they would've moved decades ago under a more traditional ownership. Moreover, it prevents greedy owners from holding the city hostage for a new stadium ("build a newer, better, stadium with more luxury boxes or we'll move") Here in the Bay Area we've seen this with both the Raiders (repeatedly) and now the Niners.

It also really does promote the sense that the team belongs to the city. There's a few other franchises with long-term family ownership (Steelers, Bills, Giants) that have that sort of deep connection with the city they're in, but it's increasingly the exception rather than the rule - ask the folks of Seattle, Hartford, Montreal, St. Louis, Houston, Baltimore (ESPN's 30 on 30 has a nice episode on the Colts leaving) etc about having a team that's a part of your identity leave. (Hell, there's still people who are pissed about the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn ...)
posted by chbrooks at 3:55 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]

One other notable difference between the Packers and AT&T is that the Packers prohibit any one owner from owning more than 200k shares, out of 4.75 million total shares - in other words, it's not just that the owners of the Packers happen to be the residents of the city, but ownership by a small group or single entity, like most of the NFL, is impossible. As others have noted, the big effect is that the Packers can't leave, but the flipside is that they have an extremely dedicated fanbase. In fact, it might be the most dedicated per capita, eg, anyone else with a serious stake for "most dedicated fans" has a much larger city to draw from. Certainly the Packers don't seem to have been prevented from winning by their ownership arrangement, though the NFL's "socialism for billionaires" system probably helps.
posted by Tomorrowful at 4:01 PM on November 1 [1 favorite]

For more on what the community ownership prevents, I recommend Major League Losers: The Real Cost Of Sports And Who's Paying For It.
posted by djb at 4:08 PM on November 1

>most dedicated per capita

Don't use the population of Green Bay as the capitation denominator. As with other teams, the fan base extends far beyond that city's borders. Not too many years ago, the Packers played regularly in Milwaukee to satisfy that city's diehard fans.
posted by megatherium at 7:04 PM on November 1

As with other teams, the fan base extends far beyond that city's borders.

Yeah, I live 20 miles from the Illinois border, and this is still Packer country to the point that wearing Bears paraphernalia will get you at least heavily razzed if not something ruder (conversely, the Cubs are quite popular here due to WGN).

Not too many years ago, the Packers played regularly in Milwaukee to satisfy that city's diehard fans.

More like being able to hold games within driving distance of more than half of the state's population (the southeast corner). Ultimately the expense of maintaining/leasing two stadiums was not worth the added revenue, and fans stayed with the team when they returned to Lambeau (with the help of a tailored ticket package).

Interestingly, the NFL has recently reduced its minimum ownership stake requirements to facilitate family succession. But even a 10% stake is seen as too small by some:

The idea behind a high percentage requirement for the general partner is to have a single voice running the team and a person who would be able to step in financially if so needed.

As a result, some critics question the NFL’s move.

“It creates additional risk for the clubs without having a deep-pocketed lead investor,” said Joe Kosich, formerly a sports banker at major sports lender Wachovia and who now runs his own sports advisory boutique, Dornoch Capital Advisors. “I really don’t like the idea of them lowering the threshold for existing clubs.”

Other ancillary effects of the ownership arrangement are that the Packers are the only team required by law to reveal its finances, and that it must maintain its own reserve fund to make up for a lack of deep-pocket investors. As such it has a higher incentive to pursue individual marketing and licensing deals.
posted by dhartung at 8:05 PM on November 1

Yeah, I live 20 miles from the Illinois border, and this is still Packer country

Likewise, Hudson WI is Packers green-and-gold, in spite of being a relatively easy drive away from the Metrodome, home of the Vikings.

The Packers seem to get mentioned frequently in sports facility and ownership discussions in the Twin Cities, whether in the media, in the Legislature, or around somebody's rec room or bar. Probably more so now that Los Angeles is building a shiny new stadium with no team in it, and the Vikings' lease at the Metrodome is running out again. Rightly or wrongly, there are people who see the perceived ownership situation of the Packers as a model to follow.
posted by gimonca at 8:14 PM on November 1

I watched the Vikings beat the Packers tonight, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies....
posted by gimonca at 8:15 PM on November 1