Eighteen years ago, when Mark Murphy presented his first financial report after becoming president of the Green Bay Packers, the NFL shared $138 million in revenue with each team.
On Wednesday, just days before Murphy officially retires and passes control to incoming president Ed Policy, the Packers announced that their national revenue sharing from the last fiscal year was $432.6 million. This comes after national revenue exceeded $400 million per team for the first time, reaching $402.3 million.
“I am still amazed by how popular the NFL is and how well the league office can generate revenue,” Murphy said. “It’s really impressive.”
Green Bay’s finances provide a unique insight into the NFL’s revenue-sharing figures because the Packers are the only publicly owned team, which means they must disclose their financial statements every year.
With $432.6 million shared among all 32 NFL teams, it shows that the league distributed over $13 billion in revenue from the last fiscal year.
Mark Murphy, along with Maureen Smith (the Packers’ chief financial officer) and Karl Schmidt (the treasurer of the team’s executive committee), revealed these numbers to be presented to stockholders at the annual meeting on Friday at Lambeau Field. Murphy noted that national revenue makes up about 60% of the Packers’ total income.
“Most of this comes from the growth in national TV deals,” Murphy explained. “The league aims for an annual growth rate of about 7%. Additionally, they’ve successfully shifted more towards streaming, but a large part of our national revenue still comes from broadcast television.”
This contributed to an increase in the Packers’ operating profit, rising from $60.1 million to $83.7 million compared to last year. Local revenue also saw a boost, going from $251.8 million to $286.4 million thanks to hosting an extra home game since the league expanded to a 17-game schedule.
Furthermore, the Packers’ corporate reserve fund grew to $579 million, up from $536 million the previous year.
Since the Packers are owned by over half a million shareholders, they cannot take private equity investments like some other teams do to raise funds.
The team reports that there are about 5,204,615 shares held by 539,029 stockholders, and none of them receive dividends. To prevent any single individual from taking control of the team, no one can own more than 200,000 shares.
Murphy mentioned that during his time with the team, the Packers have put $675 million into improving Lambeau Field and their facilities. They just revealed a newly updated locker room this week.
“We don’t have a wealthy owner with deep pockets, so we’ve focused on building our corporate reserve fund over the years,” Murphy explained. “I think this is especially important now since other teams can sell minority shares as well as private equity up to 10% of their value.”
