In recent years a number of minor league baseball teams and second division soccer teams have tried to make themselves “owned by the people.” The thought is simple…sell fans stock, make them owners and then let them participate in management decisions as part of a “people’s team.” A few venture sin the United States were stopped by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A few in the UK got off the ground but fell apart due to indecision, loss of focus and lack of success on the field. The one or two Indy ventures that did launch in the States lost profitability and interest quickly, and either went out of business or reverted to a single owner.
Yet on Tuesday, the one true community owned team, the Green Bay Packers, will, for the fifth time in their history, offer stock to their fans at $250 a share. The stock has no real value…there are no dividends, it cannot be sold or traded or cashed in and it can only be passed to relatives. It doesn’t help you get tickets or Aaron Rogers autograph. It gets you a great piece of paper and an annual report, and the chance to go to Green Bay at your expense to attend the annual shareholders meeting, where you don’t vote on anything. What the sale is, is the best and only way the team can raise funds, by charter, to improve the stadium and the infrastructure of the World Champion Packers. It is a gesture of support, and it gives fans a feeling of true “ownership” of a small part of one of sports’ iconic brands. The packers are an anomaly with regard to ownership, set up long before the big money world of sport today, with an ownership situation that was legislated out of major sports years ago. However the system is the only way for the team and their charter to raise money in the current governance system…they cannot use public funds, sell PSL’s or naming rights or over-commercialize Lambeau Field. In reality, PSL’s may get fans a higher rate of return for a successful team. The $200 per share for Packers stock offered this week goes into the bank and will never be seen again, unless you count the ROI of a successful football team.
Now would stock work for the Los Angeles Clippers or the Pittsburgh Pirates? Not today probably. However the Packers have timed their offerings for the long term when the team is on an upswing, and the effective professional management team, now lead by Mark Murphy, has the tremendous business sense to make every shareholder feel as if their $200 makes a difference. They are always welcome in Green Bay, win or lose. With all respect to the Dallas Cowboys, the Packers seem to have become America’s team, a powerful brand in the smallest market for sport in North America. They are literally a public trust with amazing marketing potential who never seem to rock the boat and have players when they are in Green Bay who recognize the responsibility they uphold and treat their time there as gold (green as well). When they leave maybe that’s another story (Brett Farve as an example) but that protection of image and brand by all is what makes them special, and what will make Tuesday “Field of Dreams”-like for sports fans across America. They will call and plunk down their $250 per share with no hope of return, but it will make them all feel like they have a sense of purpose, especially in the challenging times athletics has today.
It is a system that works because of the time invested in protecting and building a brand as a legacy, and for that protection the franchise is rewarded not just by loyalty, but by hard dollars. The stock sale may seem like a bit of a charade, but in reality it may be the biggest testament to investment in sport seen anywhere, especially in today’s difficult economy.
