LMTYS: Sal Breaks Down the Packers Financials

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[upbeat music] Let me tell you something, Pack Nation, housekeeping first, then I lose my mind, in that order.

There was no show this morning.

None.

You hit play, you got nothing new.

And I know some of you noticed because a few of you told me about it.

That is on the schedule.

That is not on you.

Ryan got back late last night, and I do not mean late like eleven o'clock late.

I mean the kind of late where you look at the clock and you go, "Well, there is no sense going to bed now, is there?" There was no time to cut it, no time to post it, no time to do any of it.

But he is in there right now, head down, headphones on, building tomorrow's show while I sit here yelling into a microphone about accounting.

So tomorrow you are getting a real one.

Stay with me here.

Now, the annual report.

And here we go again, Pack Nation.

The numbers dropped Friday, and by Saturday morning my phone would not stop.

"The Packers lost money.

The Packers are broke.

The model is finally falling apart.

Green Bay is cooked." Every year, every single year we do this dance.

So let me give you the actual number, and I want you to sit in it for a second before you say one word back to me.

The Green Bay Packers fiscal year twenty twenty-six posted an operating loss of one point one million dollars.

One point one million on seven hundred and fifty-three million dollars in revenue.

That is not a crisis.

That is a rounding error with a publicist.

Do you understand what that ratio actually is? Stay with me.

If you personally made one thousand dollars this year, you came up one dollar and forty-six cents short.

A dollar forty-six.

You do not call a family meeting over a dollar forty-six.

You check the couch cushions, you move on with your life.

You do not go on television about it.

And believe me, I am the last man alive qualified to lecture anybody on money.

I have a system.

My system is I do not look.

That is the entire system.

I look one time in April, I make a noise, and then I do not look again until the following April.

But here is what is driving me up the wall.

The headline is doing all the work, and the story underneath is saying something completely different.

You know the famous one, the newspaper that printed, "Dewey defeats Truman," big and black across the front page, and the guy who actually won it stood there holding it up, laughing at it.

The headline was competent.

The headline was huge.

The headline was also wrong because somebody ran the presses before the counting was done.

That is exactly what happened here.

Everybody read the top line and stopped reading because if you keep going, and are you ready for this? The Packers net income for the year was one hundred and thirty-two point five million dollars, up fifty-four point eight percent.

Up fifty-four point eight percent.

That is the broke team.

That is the franchising collapse.

I am not making this up.

Okay, okay, let me settle down because there is a real conversation buried in here, and I am not going to be the goofball who waves it off just because it makes me feel good.

And I want to be fair about something.

This is not a made-up story.

This is genuinely the first operating loss this organization has posted outside of a pandemic year since nineteen ninety.

Nineteen ninety.

That is a real streak, and it is over.

I am not going to pretend that is nothing.

I am just going to tell you what it actually means, which is a different job than screaming the number at you.

Here is the honest breakdown.

Revenue was up four point seven percent, seven hundred and fifty-three million.

That is a record.

That is the most money this organization has ever taken in.

Expenses were up, too, eighteen point seven percent, seven hundred and fifty-four point one million.

Yeah, eighteen point seven against four point seven.

That is the whole story right there.

That is the entire ball game.

Nothing else in that report matters as much as those two numbers sitting next to each other.

So the obvious question, and it is the right question, I am not dodging it, is where did it go? What did they blow it on? New carpet in the suites? A statue of somebody? No None of that.

Not one dime of it.

Player cost.

Player cost went up by roughly one hundred thirty million dollars in one year.

One hundred thirty million.

Total player spend landed around four hundred forty-seven million.

And I know exactly what you are about to ask me, because I asked it too.

And I want you to hear this in the right order, because when I found out what that money bought, I stopped being worried and I started laughing.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills.

Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Price and coverage match limited by state law.

Not available in all states.

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Micah Parsons.

That is where it went, Pack Nation.

That is the line item.

One hundred eighty-eight million dollar contract.

One hundred thirty-six million guaranteed.

An all-pro edge rusher walks in the door, and somebody in the finance office has to find the place to put him.

And on top of that, nobody explains this part, so I will.

When you trade a guy away, the bonus money you already promised him does not evaporate.

It comes due immediately.

So Green Bay moved some guys out and ate that acceleration in one lump instead of stretching it across the next few seasons.

So let me ask you something.

Are you mad about that? I am not mad about that.

I am delighted about that.

You ever watch a baseball team at the deadline? Contender, one piece away, two ways to make the trade, ask the other club to eat half the salary and hand over more prospects, or swallow the whole contract and keep your kids.

The team that swallows it looks awful on paper.

The money guys go pale.

And in October, nobody has ever once looked at a payroll in October.

That is what Green Bay just did.

Took the pain now on purpose so it is not sitting there in twenty twenty-eight when it would actually cost us something.

Or picture a supper club on a county road running the same kitchen since your grandfather ate there.

One year, the owner replaces all of it at once.

New hood, new fryers, new walk-in, top to bottom.

The books that year are ugly, red.

Anybody glancing at that paper would tell you the place is going under.

The place is not going under.

The place just bought itself twenty years of Friday nights.

That is the Packers.

That is exactly the Packers.

Now, I am not gonna sit here and tell you Ed Policy is making things up, because he is not.

There is a real thing in this report, and it is not the one point one million.

It is the structure.

Every other team, when they need cash, can sell a minority slice to a private equity outfit.

They do not give up control.

They push a button and money comes out.

Policy put it plainly.

Everybody else has a machine on the wall they can walk up to, and we do not.

We have five hundred thirty-nine thousand shareholders and a reserve fund.

That is the deal.

Policy said another club could raise more than our whole reserve fund in a matter of months.

That is a real long-term problem.

I am not waving it off, but that is a twenty thirty-five conversation.

That is not a we are broke today conversation.

And the media flipped one into the other because a fifteen-year revenue gap does not get anybody to click on anything.

And here is what did not make the headline.

Every team in this league got four hundred fifty-three point two million from the NFL.

Same check.

Thirty-two clubs, mostly TV money, and that is going up, not down.

And local revenue, my favorite number in the whole report, went from two hundred eighty-six point four million up to two hundred ninety...

Hang on, let me get this right.

I'm not gonna be sloppy on you.

Two hundred ninety-nine point eight million.

And we did that on eight home games instead of nine.

Fewer home dates, more local money.

Explain that to me.

That is not a dying business, Pack Nation.

That is a business that could sell you a parking pass for a game that is not being played.

Policy did float naming rights on some other assets.

And before anybody panics, not the stadium.

Nobody is putting a company name on Lambeau Field.

And look, I know how I sound.

I am a guy in Peshtigo with a microphone who once burned 40 minutes of your life arguing about a punter.

I could not read a balance sheet if you read it to me out loud.

But I can read a room.

And this room is being told to panic over $1.46.

So let me tell you what that $1.1 million really is.

It is not a wound.

It is a receipt.

A receipt from a franchise that had the money sitting right there and spent it on the football team instead of admiring it.

Are you hearing me? How many clubs would kill for that problem? A team that came up short because it went out and got an all-pro.

That is the dream.

That is what you want your ownership doing.

We do not have a billionaire with a boat.

We have you.

And your team took everything it had and put it into the roster.

And the meeting is today.

Wanna call Lambeau.

Thousands of people filling those seats over a certificate worth nothing that means everything.

So do me a favor this week.

When some knucklehead at work tells you the Packers lost money, hit him with the real number.

Then the $132.5 million in net income.

Then walk away and let him sit with it.

And subscribe.

Leave a review.

A nice one.

I am fragile.

And tell one friend about us.

One.

That is all I am asking.

Ryan has a real one coming for you tomorrow.

Go Pack Go!

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