It is honestly admirable that they keep getting away with this.

The Green Bay Packers could be up for sale again. At least the "feeling" of buying the Packers is probably going to be available to anyone with $250 in the near future.

That's because the NFL has approved the Packers to once again sell more stock in the team. This is one of the quirky things that makes the Packers, "The Packers."

It's different in Green Bay because the team is owned by the city. They answer to the people of Green Bay, not billionaire owners.

-Some cheesehead from Muckawongo. Probably

While it is true that the team is publicly owned, the money only flows one direction, and that's NOT back into the pockets of the "stockholders." It's less of an opportunity of ownership and more of a community fundraiser for a team that's worth over 3 billion dollars.

The original intention of having the team being "publicly owned" were pretty smart. The first sale of "stock" in the team was in 1923. $5,000 was raised from 1,000 investors who also had to purchase 6 season tickets. This would ostensibly keep the team in Green Bay, if it was the community that owned it.  Two more stock sales were held in 1935 and 1950 that coincided with the growth of the NFL.

Then in 1997, the team seemed to realize that this could be used as basically a fund raiser for the team. That was when they expanded the number of shares sold from less than 5,000 to earning more than $24 million by selling more than 100,000 shares to the public.

Then in 2011 the Packers raised another $64 million for stadium improvements by selling more than 200,000 shares for $250 a piece.

The reasoning for these stock sales are being framed as a way for the team to improve the stadium without asking for public funding, but that's exactly what the team is doing. They're asking people to basically pay a voluntary tax to build a new scoreboard, or add 7,000 seats.

It's a brilliant marketing strategy that lets the Packers, who are once again valued at over $3 billion to not have to dip into their own savings to improve the fan experience, they just let the fans help out with that.

I get that for $250 you can feel like you're part of the team. It is probably a really cool piece of paper that you can one day leave your kids. All that makes sense, I'm just impressed that the Packers organization has convinced their fans to give them money with basically nothing in return.

They even have a disclaimer at the bottom of the post on their website about this future stock sale:

Stock in the Packers does not constitute an investment in "stock" in the common sense of the term. The Packers will have no obligation to repay the amount a buyer pays to purchase Packers stock. Anyone considering the purchase of Packers stock should not purchase the stock to make a profit or to receive a tax deduction or any other economic benefits.

The Packers haven't announced when the new stocks will be on sale but something tells me that if you want to send them $250 at any point they will gladly accept it. Congrats to the Packers for running one of the greatest schemes the professional sports world has ever seen.

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