The Green Bay Packers are enjoying their first time hosting the NFL Draft, celebrating the occasion outside Lambeau Field. They’ve brought out legends and figures of the Packers’ bold history, including team president Mark Murphy.
The Green Bay Packers’ Unique Team Ownership
Murphy came out to announce the Packers’ first-round pick, showing gratitude to the franchise’s dedicated fan base. He then thanked the teams’ owners, reminding the rest of the NFL that the Packers’ organization is not run like any other around the league.
While 31 of the NFL’s franchises are owned by majority owners or ownership groups, the Packers have been a public corporation for over 100 years.
The Packers have an estimated 538,967 owners and one team president. They’ve been a non-profit corporation since Aug. 23, 1923, with the original shares selling for $5 a piece at the time. Since then, the Packers have had five more stock sales, increasing the number of owners in 1935, 1950, 1997, 2011, and 2021. Shares in the most recent stock sale sold for $300 each in 2021.
The Packers’ ownership setup is actually illegal in the modern-day NFL. Every team has to be owned by a single owner or a small organization of owners, like the newly formed Washington Commanders ownership group. Green Bay is granted an exception to that rule because it’s been a publicly owned franchise for such a long period, being grandfathered in.
Green Bay was ranked as the 12th most-valuable NFL franchise in 2024, with a valuation of $6.3 billion, according to CNBC’s Official 2024 NFL Team Valuations.
How To Buy Shares of the Green Bay Packers
Most of the Packers’ owners are Packers fans. The shares are structured in a way that the owner cannot take a profit. Their shares don’t pay dividends, and owners of those shares are not allowed to transfer them to anybody outside of passing them down through the family.
Shares don’t have any market value, and any owner wanting to sell can only sell the shares back to the team for a percentage of the original purchase price. The shares are treated more like collectibles — a way to support the Packers franchise.
READ MORE: Who Owns the Packers? A Closer Look at the Ownership Structure in Green Bay
If you’re wondering how you can buy shares of the Packers, you’ll have to wait until their next offering period. There’s been a total of six since the inception in 1923, and there’s no guarantee of when the next one might be.
There were 10 years between the last two offering rounds, so by that logic, the next one won’t be until at least 2031.