At 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, Wisconsinites and Green Bay Packers fans worldwide had the chance to buy a $250 piece of paper that means practically nothing.
Within a couple of hours, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Packer fans gobbled up 28,000 of those pieces of paper, dropping the requisite $250 so their team could raise some of the $143 million needed to pay for upgrades to Lambeau Field. For their trouble, the proud new owners of those pieces of paper will receive precisely zero dividends, no game tickets, no merchandise, nothing. You will be able to cast a vote at the Packers’ annual meeting, where you can mingle with other proud owners of pieces of paper, and where your vote will be one of quite literally millions of others.
Still, when those pieces of paper went on sale Tuesday morning they flew from the proverbial shelves. Soon afterward, proud Packer fans boasted about their new purchase on Facebook and Twitter, advertising that they were now part-owners of football’s world champions. The Internet responded with appropriate snark.
“The Packers are essentially printing money and don’t have to do anything for it,” Gregg Rosenthal wrote on ProFootballTalk.com Wednesday.
Notre Dame professor Richard Sheehan went further.
“The stock sale is basically a scam from an investment perspective,” Sheehan said in a statement Tuesday. “It offers no meaningful input and no financial benefit.”
Financial benefit isn’t the point, of course. My esteemed fellow columnist Ryan Evans bought Packer stock Tuesday, and said he didn’t do it because he thought he would make money or cast the deciding vote on what free agent the team would sign next summer.
He did it, he explained, to be a part of something bigger than himself.
And while that’s usually an idea I can get behind (it’s something I get to do every day here at The Daily Cardinal), I can’t wrap my head around it in a sports context. Maybe it’s because I grew up cheering for teams that aren’t publicly owned, like the Packers are, teams where the owner was a top one percent-type old man who was always trying to move the franchise if he didn’t get his way. Maybe it’s because I outgrew the idea that a team really cares about its city and its fans, and the Packers never did. Sports teams are soulless, we’re all taught, but the true believers in Green Bay must have skipped that day.
Still, I just don’t get the point of buying stock in a team.
It’s better as a fundraising model than its alternative, of course: The extortion professional sports teams engage in to force cities and states to pay for their upgrades and stadiums. It’s certainly preferable to what’s been happening in Minnesota, where the Vikings have been pushing the state legislature for public financing of a new stadium. At least the people in a stock sale are choosing to take part, and aren’t being forced to fund upgrades to Lambeau Field with their tax dollars.
Packer stock is meaningless, except for the meaning given to it by the community of Packer fans. That’s nice, I suppose, but ultimately so many of these new “owners” of the Green Bay Packers have just paid $250 in the football equivalent of a bake sale. It’s a great novelty, not to mention a good idea for fundraising, but while I wouldn’t consider Packer stock a “scam,” it’s certainly not worth the hundreds of dollars fans have been giddy to give.
Right now, there are thousands of Packer fans who feel the immense pride that can only come from owning a piece of paper. And there’s no doubt those pieces of paper will be found beneath Christmas trees in Green Bay and Madison and the rest of Wisconsin, not to mention in frames on living room walls for years to come. Maybe I’m just too cynical, but I just don’t get it.
What is the appeal of Packers stock? E-mail Nico at nicosavidge@gmail.com.
