Why The Green Bay Packers Are Objectively The Best NFL Franchise

I don’t know much about football, but if I know one thing it’s that tI don’t know much about football, but if I know one thing it’s that the Green Bay Packers are objectively the best NFL franchise – and perhaps the best American sports franchise, period.

And this has nothing to do with their players (I couldn’t name any!), their coaching (ditto!), their track record (I’m utterly ignorant), or the skill with which they play (I’ve never seen them play, and even if I did I couldn’t tell skilled play from unskilled play).

No, the Packers are objectively the best NFL franchise because of their ownership structure.

You see, unlike every other NFL team, the Packers aren’t owned by some billionaire – they’re owned by their fans and the city of Green Bay. That means that when the city invests millions in a new stadium, the city isn’t borrowing money to enrich a billionaire, but rather its investing in an asset it owns. An asset that the people of Green Bay own. It means that the Packers can’t move to another town or threaten to move unless the city bribes them into staying. And it means that when the people of Green Bay, more than the people of any other American city, root for their hometown town team, they root for their hometown team.

To illustrate all the problems with the non-civic ownership, I’ll talk a lot about the Raiders. I’m not picking on them – they’re responding to the same incentives that every privately-owned NFL team has, and doing the same stuff all the other teams do. Only the Packers couldn’t do what they’ve done.

The Stadium Scam

Professional Athletics, especially the NFL, is incredibly profitable – and it nevertheless receives a variety of government subsidies, both explicit and implicit. The most visible of these subsidies is the public money spent on stadiums.

These subsidies are not trivial. New stadiums cost hundreds of millions – and cities have repeatedly picked up part of that cost. For instance, the Oakland Raiders move to Las Vegas was accompanied by the an agreement with Clark County and Vegas to build a new $1.8 billion stadium, (which will almost certainly end up costing more after the inevitable cost overruns). The public (in the form of Clark County and Las Vegas) is paying 750 million dollars (40% of the sticker cost) through a special hotel tax. And in exchange for this what do the people of Vegas and Clark County get? Some share of the rents, some revenue sharing from the stadium? No. They get nothing. They have taken on a 750-million-dollar liability in order to give the Raiders and the NFL a 750-million-dollar asset. This represents a transfer from the people of Clark county to the millionaires and billionaires who own the team. I can’t even call this crony capitalism – its simply looting. Raiders indeed.

For context: Clark County has a very serious homelessness problem. Given a 3.5% discount rate (about the coupon rate on Clark County bonds), an asset with a PV of 750 million dollars is equivalent to 26.25 a year indefinitely. That would be enough money to permanently house 20-30% of the approximately 6,400 homeless in Clark County.

Defenders of the deal will argue that this giveaway is justified because the stadium will increase economic activity and so bring in more tax. This is true, but it’s true of literally every other business and private-sector investment. If I start running a food truck, while I operate the truck I’m increasing economic activity and generating more tax revenue. That doesn’t mean that the government should pay for 40% of my truck in exchange for nothing! This is special pleading of the worst kind – the franchises and owners making this argument are essentially running a scam, hoping for a giveaway from the government.

Public ownership would make all the difference here. If Las Vegas / Clark County had bought the Raiders, then paid to build a stadium, and then moved them to Vegas, they would be investing in asset they owned. They’d being taking on liabilities in order to acquire assets – a normal sort of financial decision. Not the bullshit giveaway on display in the Raiders deal.

The Problem of Relocation

There’s a lot of civic pride and loyalty tied up in sports teams – but this feeling is not mutual. The Oakland Raiders are not, really, the Oakland Raiders. They are the Raiders that happen to be in Oakland. In 1982 they moved from Oakland to Los Angeles. In 1995 they moved back to Oakland. In 2019 or 2020, they’ll move again, this time to Las Vegas. I wonder how long they’ll stay there? 

This problem of relocation is tightly tied to the stadium scam. Privately-owned sports franchises can and do threaten to move unless their local governments shell out for shiny new facilities. These threats have repeatedly been carried out, and with franchises burning their bridges with local fans in pursuit of greater profits.

For example, consider the Baltimore Colts 1984relocation to Indianapolis The Colts left after a decade of feuding with state and local government over a new stadium. Their owner wanted free stuff from the government, didn’t get it, and so he ran off to Indianapolis.

In 1969 the city of Baltimore announced they would seek higher rental fees for the old Memorial Stadium. The Colts owner at the time, , had been threatening to move for some time and complained that the old stadium was inadequate and wanted the city of Baltimore to build a new stadium. In 1972 the city unveiled its proposal to build a new stadium (the “Baltodome”) which would serve both the Colts and the Orioles.. They estimated this would cost the city $78 million – about $470 million in 2018 dollars. Interestingly, earlier that year, the ownership of the Colts changed hands in a deal that valued them at $16 million (1972) dollars – meaning that the city could have bought them out and turned this stadium giveaway into an actual investment.

The Maryland legislature and the Baltimore comptroller were not on board with straight giveaways. Despite Maryland spending significant public money on stadium improvements, Irsay wanted more public investment (i.e. free capital improvements) in the stadium, so he began to shop around various cities, looking for someone who would bribe him into moving.

Things came to ahead in 1984. Baltimore didn’t have the money to give away a stadium to the Colts, but there was legislation in motion that would give the city the right to seize the team using eminent domain. So Isray quickly packed up and snuck off to Indianapolis under cover of darkness. Indianapolis had bribed Isray with the promise of a $12.5 million loan, a $4 million training complex, and a new $77.5 million training complex – worth $30 million, $10 million, and $188 million in 2018 respectively.

All this bullshit rigmarole wouldn’t have happened – couldn’t have happened – if Baltimore had owned the Colts. Maryland or Baltimore investing in new stadium for the team wouldn’t have been a fiscally indefensible giveaway to wealthy owners.

Civic Ownership or Corporate Ownership?

Cities are financially (through the stadium scam and other mechanisms) and emotionally invested in their sports franchises. I think that this is a, on balance, good thing, since it fosters civic pride and a shared identity, brings in money for cities, and, of course, sports are a recreational activity that people enjoy watching and participating in.

The problem with private ownership of sports franchises is that is that cities are financially and emotionally invested in assets they don’t control. Private ownership is corporate ownership. It means that the team will always be acting to maximize its profits – even if that means betraying the love and loyalty of its fans, or extorting financial concessions from fans or politicians (who might be worried about being blamed for the move) by threatening to move.

Do we think the owners of a business will put civic pride before profits?

Public or civic ownership, by contrast, solves this problem – the people of the city have control over an institution that they are all emotionally invested in. The mentality, loyalties, and identities around a sports franchises aren’t like the mentalities and identities and loyalties around usual private businesses. People think, talk, and feel as if these teams are cultural or civic institutions – because they are.

That’s how sports franchises should be run as as non-profits or under public ownership. Like the Packers.