OldSpeak

Sensitivity and Reciprocity: Why Football Should be Publicly Owned

By Neal Shaffer
Octber 13, 2004

Football season has returned, and with it comes a weekly ritual that, as much as any other, defines who we are as Americans. It is an amazing thing to behold, from the social aspect of getting together for "The Game" to the way that we, as fans, see the accomplishments of athletes as an embodiment of things we would like to do and be. Yet for all the enjoyment football creates in this country, there is always a lingering sense of manipulation. Whether it takes the form of an $8.00 beer or a stadium with an asinine name like Network Associates Coliseum, we pay a price for our fun.

It's also a price that generates a unique kind of tension. If sports are basically nothing more than entertainment, then it may make sense to milk the fans for all they're worth. But it is legitimate for the fans to question whether a professional sports team should be viewed that way. A team is not a movie that runs a continuous loop on thousands of screens across the country, and it is not a band of musicians who lumber from town to town a couple of times a year. A football team is an extension of the place it calls home and, thus, of the people who live there.

Given that, common sense would dictate a certain amount of sensitivity and a sense of reciprocity between the team and the fans. It would demand that the team make decisions with the best interests of the fans and the city in mind. The past few decades have seen things move so far in the other direction that the very idea seems ridiculous on its face.

The reason, generally speaking, is ownership. Poor ownership is rampant in professional sports, so much so that one need not live in Baltimore to hate the name Angelos or in Los Angeles to feel similarly about Donald Sterling. When Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder decided to install 5,000 new "limited view" seats under an overhang at FedEx Field, it was not in response to a flood of fans requesting to sit behind a concrete pillar. Similarly, when stadium naming rights are sold—in the embarrassing case of the Baltimore Ravens, resold after the original purchaser went bankrupt—the only benefit is to ownership. Fans are continually subjected to the short end of supply and demand: there are only so many home games a year, and the owners know that we'll take what we're given if we want to be a part of that.

So, can anything be done? It's hard to say. But the current state of affairs, being as bad as it is, makes the story of the Green Bay Packers all the more impressive.

Green Bay, Wisconsin is the last place one would think to look for an NFL franchise. It's a city of just over 100,000 residents with an average December high of 29 degrees (24 in January). It's neither the largest nor the most well known city in the state, and there are no other major professional sports teams there. It is, according to Nielsen, the country's 69th largest media market—below Tulsa, just ahead of Toledo, and easily the lowest of all NFL cities. Yet in the high stakes economy of American football, the Packers have managed to not only survive but flourish. They have one of the most devoted fan bases in the league, and they sell out every game, every year. And they don't have an owner.

More precisely, they don't have a single owner. The Green Bay Packers have been, since 1922, a publicly owned, nonprofit corporation. Their ownership consists of the very entities to which they are theoretically beholden: the city and the fans. To ensure that no one person can claim a controlling stake, there is an ownership limit of 200,000 shares. Decisions are made by a seven member Board of Directors, each of whom is elected by the general body of shareholders. Only the President of that Board (currently Robert E. Harlan) receives compensation, with the remaining members serving on a volunteer basis. There have been four stock sales in the history of the Packers (1923, 1935, 1950 and 1997), and in each case, ownership was extended to any member of the public who had an interest. Public interest was high, and, in the process, the Packers' connection to the city, the game and the fans deepened.

There is a direct correlation to draw between the market anomaly that is the Packers and the structure of their ownership. By all conventional logic, the NFL should have left Green Bay years ago for a larger market, a sponsored stadium and a sweetheart package of tax breaks from one desperate town or another. One need only look to the examples of Baltimore (where the Colts left for Indianapolis) and Cleveland (where the Browns left for, oddly enough, Baltimore) to see what the fate of the Packers might have been. Yet they remain in Green Bay, and likely always will, because the ultimate decision-making power rests where it belongs.

The Packers may be the exception to the rule, but their example also proves something else. People will go out of their way to be part of something valuable, and Green Bay's business model provides that. Skeptics might fairly point out that public ownership of sports teams is a far from perfect concept. Indeed, many European soccer teams (the legendary Manchester United among them) are publicly traded corporations, and the situation there is by no means ideal. Fans still have to contend with the deep pockets of big business, while dealing with the additional complication of not knowing exactly who to blame. Nonprofit status solves that problem, but, in all fairness, it would be a lot to ask of an industry the size of the NFL to suddenly turn charitable. Nevertheless, it works in Green Bay.

One cannot help but think that, if it works there, it could probably work somewhere else, too.

DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN OLDSPEAK ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE.