Is the Packers a Real Football Team?

Green Bay Packers, Inc. The Packers are the only publicly owned major professional sports franchise in the United States. Rather than being the property of an individual, partnership, or corporate entity, they are held as of 2022 by 537,460 stockholders. The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

International fans like the Packers for the same reasons Americans do: They have good players and win a lot of games but, overwhelming, they also are charmed by the team’s history, with its hardscrabble early days, and its public ownership, the only such in the NFL.

The Green Bay Acme Packers, founded in 1919 (joined the NFL in 1921, now the Green Bay Packers) is the oldest NFL franchise with continuous operation in the same location. League membership gradually stabilized throughout the 1920s and 1930s as the league adopted progressively more formal organization.

Article V, Section 4—otherwise known as the Green Bay Rule—states that “charitable organizations and/or corporations not organized for profit and not now a member of the league may not hold membership in the National Football League.”

Championships. The Green Bay Packers are the most successful franchise in professional football history. The team was founded in 1919, joined the NFL in 1920 and has won 13 titles in its 93 years of existence. Other teams may have won more Super Bowls, but none have more championships.

Green Bay is commonly known as Titletown among the fans. The reason for that is because the Packers hold the record for most championships in the NFL – a total of 13. Four of those titles are Super Bowls and the team has managed to win three consecutive titles on two different occasions.

DAYTON, OH

In 1920, Dayton Triangles team manager Carl Storck attended the first-ever organizational meeting and a few weeks later, on October 3, 1920, the Triangles hosted the first-ever NFL game against the Columbus Panhandles at Triangle Park, winning 14-0.

There are three major benefits to owning a share of stock in the Packers: voting rights, an invitation to an annual shareholders meeting, and the ability to purchase merchandise specifically for shareholders. The shareholders meeting takes place each year inside Lambeau Field.

Designed Lambeau’s grass-growing lights, called Stadium Grow Lighting. The artificial lighting system is made up of a complicated grid of retractable arms that hold hundreds of light bulbs. The Packers were the first North American team to experiment with these lights.

Occupations in Green Bay are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs including office and sales workers, service providers, and professionals. The city’s largest employers are in the healthcare and insurance industries.

The Los Angeles Kings have the largest percentage of nonwhite fans by a significant margin, followed by the Florida Panthers, Arizona Coyotes, Dallas Stars and Washington Capitals.

But the Green Bay Packers are unique because they are the smallest market in professional sports, yet they have the best and strongest fan base in the world. What separates the Packers and their fans from the rest of the pack is that the team is owned publicly by the fans. It has been that way since August 23, 1923.

Featured Photo By CBS 58 Sports