One hundred years ago, in August 1923, the Green Bay Packers football club was formed in a public stock sale.
The Packers sold 1,000 shares at $5 apiece, raising $5,000 (about $90,000 today, adjusted for inflation). The team has held five stock sales since then, in 1935, 1950, 1997, 2011 and 2021, but despite raising tens of millions of dollars, the Packers’ unusual structure has a big asterisk: The team is a publicly owned nonprofit corporation, and the stock? It cannot be resold, traded or returned to the team.
While the Packers paved the way for the public to own a piece of a sports team (even if there isn’t much they can do with that ownership), in recent decades sports has mostly remained an investment for the ultrarich. With…