For a guy who just published a book about the Green Bay Packers’ incredible history, Thomas Nelson spends a lot of time worried about the team’s future.
“I estimate that the Packers have three to five years before they get into a major financial crisis,” Nelson told UpNorthNews during an interview about his latest book, “The Green and Gold Standard: A People’s History of the Green Bay Packers.” (Triumph Books)
It’s a concern not widely known by Packers’ fans, Nelson said, but he believes there is a new fiscal crisis on the horizon for a team with a history of overcoming obstacles threatening its existence since its founding in 1919.
Nelson, the Outagamie County Executive and former state legislator, begins the book with the story of how a rainstorm on Thanksgiving Day 1922 threatened to dampen attendance to the point of putting the team at risk of financial doom. However, like other crises before and after that game (a Packers victory, for the record), the team always found ways to attract attention, then support, and then capital.
Ironically, it’s the people who control massive amounts of capital today who could turn the Packers’ string of Cinderella stories into a riches-to-rags outcome.
Packers can’t play their ace this time
Any hometown complacency concerning the Packers’ security in Green Bay is understandable. The team has had its share of rough times (still a pain point to anyone who was a kid trying to cheer the team in the 1970s), but there’s a national romance with the Green and Gold these days — an entire nation respecting how a team in the NFL’s smallest market has been able to field an elite roster for the past 30 years. It’s regularly described as a “storied franchise” and few could imagine a league without a team on “the frozen tundra.”
The secret to the team’s security lies with its owner. There isn’t one. That is to say, there’s not a single owner because a community owns the team. More than a half-million shareholders have bought a part of the team since its first stock offering shortly after that 1922 game in the Thanksgiving rain. It has meant no single person or family or corporate board could pack the team up in a moving van in the middle of the night, as was done to Baltimore fans in 1984. That nonprofit-public ownership is an ace card that has helped the team build a sizable pot of security over the years.
But to put the new fiscal situation in terms familiar to Sheepshead players throughout Packerland, the team’s ace means nothing if the other players are all holding queens.
Two years ago, the NFL owners voted to allow private equity firms to buy up to 10% stakes in privately-held teams. The result is a cash bonanza, without any loss of the owner’s control of the franchise, driving up the valuation of teams. The Miami Dolphins’ 85-year-old owner sold a 1% stake in his club for $125 million, meaning he could theoretically sell the team for $12.5 billion.
In the short term, Thomas said, “that means every single team except for the Packers, every single team in the NFL has access to almost $1 billion” by selling a sliver of itself to private equity investors. The Packers will have to find other ways to raise the funds to sign and retain quality players, such as naming rights and live events at Lambeau Field.
“Think of how many Taylor Swift and Luke Combs concerts you’re going to need to make up for it,” Nelson said. “You simply cannot do it. It is a monumental challenge, giving the Packers nothing. It is unacceptable that the NFL has not backfilled [the Packers disadvantage].”
One way the Packers can stay on a level playing field is through the shared revenue of the league’s television contracts. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 provides antitrust immunity to the NFL so that it can negotiate collectively with companies that want to televise games. The league then splits the TV money evenly among all of its teams, whatever their market size. The Packers received $432 million for their 2024-25 fiscal year. Without the law, each team would have to negotiate its own broadcast deals which would put small market teams at a major disadvantage. It’s why Nelson is puzzled that Wisconsin US Rep. Scott Fitzgerald recently held a hearing about potentially opening the law to changes.
“Even talking about that is just dumb,” Nelson said. “And I can’t believe he’s said it now. I haven’t heard any news about that since, so he may have gotten the message. The Packers put out a very, very strong statement opposing that so much. And the Packers are not political. You know, they realize that this is a sacrosanct institution in the state.”
But even a sacrosanct institution can stumble, especially if a looming financial disadvantage means the team enters another dark era without being competitive.
“If every single team has a $900 million to $1 billion advantage over the Packers, they will only be able to defy gravity for so long,” Nelson said. “What’s going to compound this problem is the collective bargaining agreement is coming due in about three years.”
Nelson believes a new agreement will include more player contracts with guaranteed payouts, regardless of injury, and the Packers won’t have the up-front cash to stay among the NFL’s top performers.
If the time comes that the Packers again find themselves at an existential crossroads, Nelson said there is no city like Green Bay more capable of showing how a major sports franchise can survive in a small market.
“I say two things,” Nelson said. “First of all, community; and second of all, passion for football. If you go back way back, Green Bay was always a football town. [There is a] strong culture they had, and Green Bay — the city’s fathers, families, kids, everyone — they were resolved, they were committed to keep football in Green Bay no matter what.”
[Editor’s note: Kreitlow, Nelson, and Fitzgerald all served in the Wisconsin Legislature together from 2007-2011.]
