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The Packers shares aren't QUITE meaningless. It's true that they don't pay a dividend, can't be sold (except back to the team at a loss, and they can be given to immediate family members and passed along in your will), and don't give any say on team matters.

But they DO have votes in the operation of Green Bay Packers Inc, the non-profit public corporation that owns the team. So they would get to vote on any sale of the team or attempt to relocate it. There is also a poison pill in place; if the team were to be sold, all the revenue would go to the Green Bay Packers Foundation, not to the shareholders, so the shareholders cannot benefit from a sale. (Originally the money would have gone to an American Legion post in Green Bay to build a war monument. That was changed in the 1980s, when the amount of money in question became larger than a post could conceivably use for that purpose. The current estimate of the value of the Packers is nearly $3 billion.) That structure nearly guarantees that the team will remain in Green Bay. If the team were privately owned it's nearly certain that it would have relocated to a larger media market.

Currently, 5,011,558 shares are held by 361,300 shareholders, with no one person allowed to own more than 200,000 shares (about 4%) of the corporation. This ownership structure is unique among the professional sports teams in major leagues in the US, and would not be allowed under current NFL rules; they allow a maximum of 32 owners including one that owns at least 30% of the company. The ownership structure of the Packers was already in place when the current NFL rules were adopted, and the team was allowed to keep it.

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