The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team that has played professionally in the National Football League (NFL) since 1921. The team was founded in 1919 by Curly Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun, and for the next two years played against local teams in Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. In 1921, the Packers joined the American Professional Football Association, the precursor to the NFL, with Curly Lambeau as their coach. After falling into financial trouble, the Green Bay Football Corporation, now known as Green Bay Packers, Inc., was formed in 1923. The Packers became a publicly owned football team run by a board of directors elected each year. The team went on to win six NFL championships from 1929 to 1944, including three straight (1929–1931). Along the way, Curly Lambeau, with the help of receiver Don Hutson, revolutionized football through the development and utilization of the forward pass.
After Curly Lambeau resigned from the Packers in 1949, the team fell into a slump. They did not have a winning record for 11 straight seasons until 1959, the year that the Packers hired a new coach, Vince Lombardi. Lombardi would go on to lead one of the most successful teams in league history. Thirteen Pro Football Hall of Famers played for Lombardi, including quarterback Bart Starr and linebacker Ray Nitschke. The Packers lost the 1960 NFL Championship Game, however they would go on to win five championships in seven years under Lombardi, including three straight between 1965 and 1967. This included the infamous Ice Bowl and the first two Super Bowls. After the death of Curly Lambeau in 1965, the Packers new stadium (built in 1957 as New City Stadium) was named Lambeau Field in his honor. Five years later, the Packers' second great coach, Vince Lombardi, died, just two years after leaving the team for the Washington Redskins.
From 1968 to 1992 the Packers only made the playoffs twice, and only once in a non-strike year. Even with former quarterback Bart Starr as head coach, the Packers were unable to regain their former glory. The team continued to falter until Ron Wolf took over as general manager. Wolf hired Mike Holmgren as head coach and traded a first-round draft pick to the Atlanta Falcons for quarterback Brett Favre. Favre would go on to lead the Packers to eleven playoff appearances, two Super Bowl appearances, and one championship in 1996. In 1997, the Packers had their fourth stock sale, expanding the number of shareholders and using the money to fund further expansion of Lambeau Field. In 2005, the Packers drafted quarterback Aaron Rodgers. After Favre left the team in 2007, Rodgers became the starter. During his tenure, he led the Packers to eleven playoffs appearances and one Super Bowl victory in 2010. The Packers had their fifth stock sale in 2012, again expanding the number of shareholders and using the funding to expand Lambeau Field. The Packers had a sixth stock sale in 2021, further increasing the number of shareholders. With a capacity of 81,441, Lambeau Field is the second-largest stadium in the NFL. As of 2026, the Packers hold the record for the most NFL championships (13 total) and the most wins in NFL history.
Founding
The Green Bay Packers were founded on August 11, 1919, by Curly Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun."Birth of a Team and a Legend" on Packers website The Green Bay Packers are the oldest NFL franchise in continuous operation with the same name and the same location. Lambeau solicited funds for uniforms from the Indian Packing Company, where he worked as a shipping clerk. He was given $500 ($9,062 in 2024) for uniforms and equipment, and was allowed use of the company grounds as a practice field. Lambeau initially wanted to name the team the "Indians," but his girlfriend, Agnes Aylward, suggested the name "Packers."
The 1919 Green Bay Packers season was their first season of competitive football. Nominally, the team was helmed by Willard "Big Bill" Ryan, former head coach of Green Bay West High School. However, in those days, coaches were not allowed to talk to the players during the game. As a result, Lambeau, as the team's captain and starting halfback, took on many of the responsibilities associated with a head coach in the modern game. He not only served as the team's on-field leader during games, but also signed players and ran practices. Under Ryan and Lambeau, the Packers played against other teams in Wisconsin and Michigan with game one resulting in a convincing win 53–0 against the North End Athletic Club in Menominee, Michigan. They eventually ended the season with a 10–1 record, losing only to the Beloit Fairies 6–0, a game that was mired in controversy, as the Beloit referee called back three Packers touchdowns due to penalties, which Green Bay believed weren't valid penalties. The Packers dominated their opponents, outscoring them 565–12. Following the season, Ryan resigned, and Lambeau became player-coach, becoming the face of the franchise in name as well as in fact for the next 29 years. The Packers nearly replicated their 1919 success in 1920, going 9–1–1, losing to Beloit once again, and tying the Chicago Boosters.
After only losing two games in their first two seasons, the Packers were bought by the Clair brothers and joined the one-year-old American Professional Football Association on August 27, 1921. However, the franchise was revoked by the league at the end of the season when the Packers were revealed to have used college players in a post-season exhibition game. As it turned out, the man who told the league of this was George Halas of the Chicago Staleys, who changed their name to the Bears the following year. This incident signaled the start of the infamous Packers-Bears rivalry. Lambeau appealed to the league, which had been renamed the National Football League on June 24, 1922. The NFL relented, though Lambeau had to pay the league entry fee of $50 ($933 in 2024) for what was technically a new franchise, the "Green Bay Blues." However, almost everyone still called them the Packers. Further troubles threatened to add more debt to the team. In 1922, the Packers had a heavy rainstorm the day of a game against the Columbus Panhandles, but were unable to cancel the game, as the total rainfall fell 3/100th of an inch shy of what the team's insurance policy considered a "rainout". The Packers lost money in the game and tried to hold an exhibition game on Thanksgiving against the Duluth Kelleys, but another heavy rainstorm cost the team more money. By the end of the 1922 season, the Packers were nearing bankruptcy, but local businessmen, known as "The Hungry Five," got behind the team and formed the Green Bay Football Corporation in 1923, which continues to run the franchise.
Public company
The Packers are now the only team in American professional sports that is legally a publicly traded company. Other teams, such as the Atlanta Braves (Liberty Media, previously Time Warner), New York Rangers and New York Knicks (The Madison Square Garden Company, previously Cablevision) and the Toronto Blue Jays (Rogers Communications) are subsidiaries of publicly traded companies. Additionally, three of the nine teams in Canada's Canadian Football League exist with various forms of community ownership, with the Saskatchewan Roughriders employing a similar ownership structure as the Packers. Typically, a team is owned by one person, partnership, or corporate entity; thus, a "team owner." It has been speculated that this is one of the reasons the Packers have never been moved from the city of Green Bay, a city of only 104,057 people in the 2010 census and a metropolitan population of 306,000 people.
By comparison, most other NFL franchises play in cities with populations of 350,000 or more, and which anchor metropolitan areas of over two million people. The Packers, however, have long had a large following throughout Wisconsin and the Midwest. From 1933 to 1994, the Packers played four (one pre-season, three regular-season) home games each year in Milwaukee, first at the State Fair Park fairgrounds, then at Milwaukee County Stadium.
During the 1994 season, the Packers announced that they were going to end playing games in Milwaukee. The reasons, according to team president Bob Harlan, was the larger capacity of Lambeau Field and the availability of luxury boxes, which were not available at Milwaukee County Stadium. County Stadium's replacement, Miller Park, then being planned, was always intended to be a baseball-only stadium instead of a multipurpose stadium; County Stadium was closed and demolished in 2001, with Miller Park opening around the same time. After the end of the Packers' games in Milwaukee in 1994, Harlan then instituted a "Gold" ticket package sold exclusively for Milwaukee fans, still consisting of one preseason and two regular-season games.
Based on the original "Articles of Incorporation for the (then) Green Bay Football Corporation" put into place in 1923, if the Packers franchise was sold, after the payment of all expenses, any remaining monies would go to the Sullivan-Wallen Post of the American Legion in order to build "a proper soldier's memorial." This stipulation was enacted to ensure the club remained in Green Bay and that there could never be any financial enhancement for the shareholders. At the November 1997 annual meeting, shareholders voted to change the beneficiary from the Sullivan-Wallen Post to the Green Bay Packers Foundation.
In 1950, the Packers held a stock sale to again raise money to support the team. In 1956, area voters approved the construction of a new stadium, owned by the city. As with its predecessor, the new field was named City Stadium, but after the death of founder Lambeau in 1965, on September 11, 1965, the stadium was renamed Lambeau Field.
Another stock sale occurred late in 1997 and early in 1998. It added 105,989 new shareholders and raised over $24 million, money used for the Lambeau Field redevelopment project. Priced at $200 per share, fans bought 120,010 shares during the 17-week sale, which ended March 16, 1998. As of June 8, 2005, 111,921 people (representing 4,749,925 shares) can lay claim to a franchise ownership interest. Shares of stock include voting rights, but the redemption price is minimal, no dividends are ever paid, the stock cannot appreciate in value, and stock ownership brings no season ticket privileges.
No shareholder may own over 200,000 shares, a safeguard to ensure that no individual can assume control of the club. To run the corporation, a board of directors is elected by the stockholders. The board of directors in turn elect a seven-member Executive Committee (officers) of the corporation, consisting of a president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and three members-at-large. The president is the only officer to draw compensation; The balance of the committee is sitting "gratis."
The team's elected president represents the Packers in NFL owners meetings unless someone else is designated. During their tenures as coach, Curly Lambeau and Vince Lombardi generally represented the team at league meetings in their capacity as general manager, except at owners-only meetings.
Championships The Packers have won 13 league championships, more than any other American professional football team (including 4 Super Bowls). Their arch-rivals the Chicago Bears are second, with nine NFL championships (including one Super Bowl). The historical rivalry with Chicago extends to the Hall of Fame - the Packers have the second most Hall of Famers (21, behind the Bears' 26). The Packers are also the only team to win three straight NFL titles, which they did twice (1929–1931 and 1965–67).
The first Championships (1929–1944)