Green Bay Packers, Inc.

Lore & Background

The Green Bay Packers were founded in 1919 by Curly Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun and for two years played against local teams in the Wisconsin area. In 1921, the Packers joined the American Professional Football Association, which would be renamed a year later to the National Football League (NFL). In 1923, the team faced financial difficulties; local civic leaders, including The Hungry Five, helped organize the team's ownership into a publicly owned non-profit corporation, known at the time as the Green Bay Football Corporation. That same year, shares of stock were sold at $5 a piece, with about 1,000 total shares sold for a profit of just over $5,000. Two additional stock sales occurred to help prevent insolvency: in 1935 and in 1950. The 1935 stock sale raised over $12,000, with each share sold at $25 a piece. The 1950 stock sale helped the Packers raise funds to stabilize the franchise following the merger of the All-America Football Conference with the NFL in 1949 and the departure of founder Curly Lambeau after a 30-year reign as coach. The 1950 sale also included a limit of no more than 200 shares per stockholder. Shares were again sold for $25 a piece, with the organization raising approximately $118,000 on the sale of about 4,700 shares. The corporation did not organize another stock sale until 1997 and 1998, with two more occurring from 2011 to 2012 and from 2021 to 2022. The purpose of all three sales was to raise money to fund capital improvements at Lambeau Field, including new scoreboards, new facilities, more seating, and other infrastructure enhancements.

In Their Own Story

The air inside the Lambeau Field ticket office was thick with the smell of popcorn and anticipation. An elderly man, wearing a faded jersey from the '67 championship season, handed over his check for the annual share renewal. He wasn't buying stock to make money; he was renewing his pledge to the community that raised him. As he walked out into the crisp Wisconsin wind, looking up at the frozen gridiron where legends like Brett Favre and Vince Lombardi once played, he felt a quiet pride. This wasn't just a team; it was his, and everyone else's, forever.

Reader's Guide

As a publicly owned corporation, ownership of Green Bay Packers, Inc. resides in its shareholders, of which there are 538,967 who hold a total of 5,204,625 shares. A share of Packers stock does not share the same rights traditionally associated with common or preferred stock. Ownership does not include an equity interest, does not pay dividends, cannot be traded, and has no protection under securities law. No single person can own more than 200,000 shares. Ownership does not confer any ticket purchasing or other facility access privileges. Shares can be transferred to immediate family members and be inherited after a shareholder's death, but resale of stock is only allowed back to the Packers, who pay just a fraction of the stock's original purchase price. All shareholders are subject to NFL rules regarding behavior, including not publicly criticizing the league or betting on NFL games. Each year, shareholders elect board members and executive committee members during a shareholder meeting, historically held in the month of July before the start of the NFL's regular season. The board includes a seven-person executive committee, which is led by a president. The executive committee manages the day-to-day operation of the corporation. The president exercises the roles and responsibilities typically reserved for a team owner. All executive committee members are required to retire or transition to emeritus status when they turn 70 years old. This most recently occurred to Mark Murphy, who served as team president for 18 seasons. After a formal selection process, the board elected Ed Policy to be the team's next president after Murphy's retirement was finalized in July 2025. Board members have included past NFL players, local civic leaders, and businesspeople.

Did You Know?

• The Packers are the only NFL club that is owned by a public corporation and the only major professional sports franchise in the United States that is a nonprofit entity.
• The franchise's broad-based community support and non-profit structure are frequently cited as among the most important factors which have kept the team in Green Bay for over a century in spite of being the smallest mark
• As a publicly held nonprofit, the Packers are the only North American major league sports franchise to release its financial balance sheet every year.
• The Packers were allowed to retain their public ownership model through a grandfather clause when the NFL updated its ownership rules in the 1980s.
• In 2025 the NFL allowed private equity investment in NFL teams; owners can sell up to 10% of the team to raise additional funds, but due to the rules governing the Packers ownership model, this source of revenue is not a