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Packers fans ask about team ownership, where players stay during camp Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter Richard Ryman responds to fans' questions about the Green Bay Packers.
This is a regular feature published weekly as long as there are questions to answer.
You can send questions to [email protected].
The Packers annual shareholders meeting is at 1 p.m.
July 27 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, and training camp opens July 29 at Ray Nitschke Field, so I offer these frequently asked questions about both.
Jim: It seems almost inevitable that time will eventually come when Packers will be forced to raise substantially more revenue to stay competitive with the other 31 privately owned teams.
The two biggies would seem to be selling the naming rights to Lambeau Field and selling minority stakes/equity shares like the Miami Dolphins just did for $125 million.
Especially for the minority stakes/equity shares, would this mean the Packers would have to sell the team to a private owner? Under the rubric that anything is possible, how would (will) that happen? Could that happen? As I've never been 100% sure who all really "owns" the Packers, would Brown County/City of Green Bay have to agree to sell the team in conjunction with the Packers organization? Could the Packers team/franchise be transferred to an "owner's group" of trusted parties that along with other things would commit to keeping the team in Green Bay? Other? Richard Ryman: For starters, Jim, the people who bought shares in the Packers actually own the team, all 538,967 of them.
The county and the city would have plenty to say about any such effort, I'm certain, but they wouldn't have a vote unless they own shares, too.
As long as the Packers are a nonprofit corporation as determined by Wisconsin statutes, they cannot sell equity to outsiders.
And if they could, there would be nothing to be gained by whoever was doing the investing since the team doesn't pay dividends.
The investor in the Miami Dolphins, and all others that acquired equity in NFL teams, expect some sort of value in return, whether it's regular income or eventual appreciation to be cashed in on when the team is sold.
Neither of those are available from the Packers.
My understanding of the situation is that the team would have to be dissolved rather than be allowed to change its ownership structure.
If the team is dissolved, all assets owned by the Packers would transfer to the Green Bay Packers Foundation.
If the NFL wanted to replace the Packers, it could probably assign the existing roster to the new team, but in all other respects it would have to start from scratch.
At any rate, those 538,967 screaming Packers fans would have to approve any change.
As President and CEO Ed Policy made clear, the Packers are concerned about losing ground to the other teams in terms of total revenue.
Theoretically, as long as the NFL continues revenue sharing and a salary cap, smaller-market teams like the Packers should be able to remain competitive on the field.
I'm not as versed in the salary cap as some of my sportswriter colleagues, so I'm not sure how guaranteed money and signing bonuses would play into the issue, but the Packers would have to tread more carefully than the big-money teams in those areas.
A lot of pixels were wasted on misunderstanding what Policy said a couple months ago about naming rights.
He did not propose selling naming rights to Lambeau Field, but he did put just about everything else on the table.
The Packers made their first move in that regard when they sold naming rights to the football field at Titletown to longtime partner Emplify Health (formerly Bellin Health).
Expect more to come, but not Lambeau Field anytime soon.
We are looking to be aggressive as it relates to just building our business, and revenue in general, because its just become extremely expensive to operate an NFL franchise," Policy said in his April column on Packers.com.
"And were not going to be able to compete on the field if we dont really begin to prepare ourselves to make smart moves off the field as a business." The Packers could hold another stock sale, but are limited in how often the NFL would approve those, and in terms of how much they would raise.
The last sale, in 2021-22, raised $64 million.
Compare that to the $125 million the Dolphins got for selling only 1% of their team.
Other teams sold higher amounts.
As Policy pointed out, the Packers aren't in financial trouble now, but it's his job to see well down the road, thus immediate efforts to bulk up the bottom line.
Forbes, which does financial valuations of NFL teams, pegged the Packers as having the sixth-highest revenue in the league for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
The danger is, that won't hold as the other teams sell parts of themselves and use that money to increase their sources of local income they don't have to share with their competitors.
Doug: The Packers stayed at St.
Norbert College during training camp for many years.
Now that they left there, do they stay as a team somewhere else or do they live individually during training camp? Richard Ryman: The Packers moved from St.
Norbert College dorms to a local residential hotel in 2020, the year of the COVID restrictions and lockdowns.
The Packers continued those arrangements in 2021, when the NFL still was dealing with COVID safety protocols, and they've stayed with it since.
From 1958, under head coach Scooter McLean, through 2019, Packers players were housed in St.
Norbert College dorms in De Pere during training camp.
Among other benefits, the arrangement allows teammates to bond and to be hyper-focused on getting ready for the football season.
I'm thinking the Packers found the residential hotels more convenient and chose to stay with them.
Players have gotten a lot bigger since 1958 and dorm rooms haven't, so it's more comfortable overall.
Also, the team has an extensive food service-and-nutrition dining room at Lambeau Field where players eat many of their specially designed meals, which eliminates the need for college or hotel dinning.
Contact Richard Ryman at [email protected].
Follow him on X at @RichRymanPG and on Instagram at @rrymanPG.