It's a Football Club First, Not a Business

"I joined the waiting list in 1990, 32 years ago, and in ten years I would probably be able to purchase a season ticket." The big truck Uber driver said proudly after picking me up from the Green Bay Wisconsin airport. "You see, in Green Bay, older people pass their season ticket to their children. The season ticket is passed from grandfather to father, from father to son, from generation to generation." This sentence amazed me and was only a hint to the unique experience I was about to experience in the next two days.

As part of my job at the NFL league office in NY, I flew to meet the front office folks at Green Bay Packers and learn how the team manages its ticketing inventory. "Packers", a strange name for a football team I thought to myself. But an equally strange thing is that their legendary Lambeau Field stadium has about 80 thousand seats, while Green Bay, a remote agricultural town close to the northern border of the country, has a total population of about 100 thousand. Did I say seats? Sorry, I meant aluminum benches, yes, long ones without a back rest. What kind of a football team are the Packers, I kept wondering.

When I arrived at the hotel, I was greeted by a tall, broad-shouldered receptionist who was wearing a green shirt that looked a little too small with Aaron Rodgers’ face on it. "Did you come for the game tomorrow?" He asked. "Yes" I answered. "You and another 70 thousand people" he mumbled. "Really? Even at 14F degrees in the end of December’s snow while the team barely manages to win? I mean, you almost have no chance to clinch the playoffs" I tried to challenge the big fella. He looked at me, smiled and said "Until we are officially and definitively informed by the NFL that we are out of the playoffs, we believe and continue to play with all our might!". "Have many people arrived from out of town?" I asked. "In each of the ten home games, thousands of fans from all over the US and the world come for two or three days to see a game at Lambeau. This stadium is the Mecca of Football. Last summer Manchester City and Bayern Munich came here for an exhibition match and the city was filled with German and British fans."

There is something unique and magical about the team from Green Bay. It was established in 1919, one year before the NFL was founded, and it is the only team among the 32 league clubs that is not owned by a rich businessman or a commercial corporation. The team is fully and exclusively owned by its fans who purchased the team's shares. So far, about 5 million shares have been issued during six different stock offerings over the team’s history, with the first offering held in 1923 and the most recent one held from November of 2021 to February of 2022. Now, approximately 539,000 people own stock in the Packers. To maintain the balance and equality among them, no fan is allowed to purchase more than 200,000 shares, which is approximately 4% of total shares. Each year, an annual meeting of shareholders is held and the shareholders vote their shares to elect a board of directors which meets quarterly and offers broad oversight to the corporation. The board elects a seven-member Executive Committee, consisting of a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and three members at large. Shares of stock cannot be resold, except back to the team for a fraction of the original price. Limited transfer of shares to heirs and relatives is permitted.

Milwaukee is the closest big city to Green Bay and is a two-hour drive away. But at the end of each game, a long line of cars slowly drive bumper-to-bumper which can take fans from the Milwaukee area much longer to get home. From the 1930s to the 1990s, the Packers played a portion of their home games each season in Milwaukee, in part to attract fans in that area and ensure a fair share of ticket revenue for visiting teams. When Milwaukee County Stadium needed to be replaced in the early 1990s, it was determined that the Packers would move all of their home games to Green Bay. ?If the Packers want to conduct another stock offering to raise money for Lambeau Field improvements, it requires the approval of the NFL and the other 31 team owners. In fact, NFL bylaws prevent the Packers from using the money to pay players and coaches or buy competitive game technology, and they are only allowed to use the money raised for maintenance and stadium renovation. Lambeau’s old look and feel which is full of aluminum benches instead of the stadium seats more common in most venues is partly due to the limited space inside the bowl; the stadium’s capacity would decrease by more than 10,000 if stadium seats were installed instead. Because season ticket holders often keep their tickets in families for generations, it would not be possible to shrink the stadium’s capacity.

A hat was passed around the players and everyone put some money in

"When the team was founded 103 years ago, the players would pass a hat around and put a few dollars in" says Jason McDonough, Director of the ticketing department. "There were other teams similar to us, but they didn’t survive or were bought by a rich owner, and the Packers is the only one that have survived to this day. When the NFL was founded, a local meatpacking plant donated the team’s uniforms and so it happened that the team was called the Green Bay Packers and the name remains to this day." Jason solved the mystery of the team’s name for me. "The stadium was built and renovated over the years in-part by funding from the residents of this community and as a token of gratitude, each game we offer 2,500 tickets for local residents who are not season ticket holders to purchase. In addition, we have never sold the stadium naming rights to any commercial corporation. In 1965 we named the stadium after Curly Lambeau who passed away that year and was one of the team's founders and served as a player and coach for decades."

About 90% of the stadium's capacity is sold to season ticket holders. The rest of the tickets are sold to residents, sponsors, players families, and visiting team fans. Since the team is a non-for-profit corporation, its financials are public and provides a glimpse into the numbers of the other NFL clubs. While local revenue can vary between each team, last year the Packers reported that their share of national revenue was more than $347 million, an amount that was distributed to each NFL team as part of the league’s shared revenue model.

There are more than 147,000 patient fans currently waiting on the Packers season ticket waiting list. The wait does not cost money and every year the team sends those fans a postcard informing them of their updated position in the queue. The fan on the list is responsible for informing the ticket office if their home address has changed so the team can remain in touch. But in fact, Green Bay does not have one type of season ticket that includes all ten home games. The team did not forget its fans in Milwaukee who used to attend games in the city and when the team moved all of its games to Green Bay, the Milwaukee fans were offered a three-game ticket package. Now, the Packers ticket office offers two different ticket packages: the 3-game Gold Package (typically, one preseason game and the second and fifth regular-season home game) and a 7-game Green Package (made up of the additional games on the schedule), appropriate for a team that proudly wears gold and green.

Several surveys point to the small-town team as the third most popular team in the U.S. behind the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots. Their fans pride themselves on the fact that any die-hard rival fan will quietly admit that besides their love for their own team, the Packers are their second most favorite team. Everyone loves a great underdog story of a team that is owned by its loyal fans. When I went down to the field to closely watch the players warm up before the game, there was a nice guy about my age standing next to me who told me he had come to the game to celebrate his 30th birthday. "My dad added me to the waiting list the day I was born. I hope that by my 40th birthday I would be a proud owner of a Packers season ticket" he said enthusiastically.

The snow started to fall in the open-air stadium and the wind started to gush. 14F degrees now felt like 5F degrees. Steam came out of my mouth and nose with every breath. Below the ground, a system of 43 miles of radiant heating pipe ensures that the grass does not freeze, but it does not keep the fans warm. Once Lambeau Field was filled again with about 80 thousand loud fans, I shamelessly took the advantage of being a league employee and went up to one of the heated suites to watch the game in a comfortable armchair with a back rest, a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket. Today I am just beginning to understand what it means to be a Packers fan, and while the words of Jason from the ticket office echoed in my head "Alon, we are a football club first, not a business" I realize that I should join the Packers waiting list so that I can gift my future grandson a Packers season ticket sometime in the future.