The Green Bay Packers are the only N.F.L. team whose fans can buy an ownership stake. Their annual shareholders meeting is part pep rally, part window into the league’s finances.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — It takes a certain type of Packers fan to tailgate outside Lambeau Field at sunrise months before the team’s season kicks off. But Tom Rozum isn’t an ordinary fan: He’s a Packers shareholder who last month was preparing to attend the team’s annual shareholder meeting, a rite unique to the N.F.L.’s only publicly owned team.
After Bloody Marys with family and friends, Rozum joined more than 8,000 other team shareholders in the stadium on a weekday morning last month to hear the Packers’ president, general manager and board members address the state of the fabled franchise.
“We can see where our money is going to,” joked Rozum, who lives nearby and circles the stadium daily to get to 10,000 steps. “Today, you can walk around like you own the place.”
Rozum’s shares, and those of the team’s other 539,000 shareholders, pay no dividends and cannot be traded. Their only benefits are a chance to buy shareholder-only swag and attending this two-hour annual meeting that is a cross between a dutiful accounting of the team, a pep rally and an inside joke.
Though largely worthless, the shares let fans dream that they have a voice in a team that plays in a league dominated by billionaire team owners. Many fans at the meeting viewed the Packers not as America’s Team, as the flashy Dallas Cowboys call themselves, but as Americana’s Team, a franchise that harkens back to when many N.F.L. teams were based in smaller factory towns and Vince Lombardi won championships by deploying a brand of smash-mouth football that’s no longer en vogue.
The reality is that the fans’ willingness to pay $300 for a frameable certificate helps the Packers compete with teams in far larger cities with deep-pocketed owners who can spend freely on bells and whistles such as top-rate facilities to lure the best free agents and stadiums to attract well-heeled fans.
“This is like Christmas in July,” said Keith Cox, 50, a new shareholder who drove 15 hours from Clarkesville, Ga., with his son, Jordan, 20, to attend the meeting.