If attendance at the team’s annual shareholder meeting means anything (and it probably doesn’t), the Packers are currently moving in the wrong direction.
The very last line of the article in the Green Bay Press Gazette story regarding Wednesday night’s annual gathering points out that attendance as “well below normal at 4,200.”
That would seem to require further analysis, or at least historical comparison. For example, the article could have mentioned that, in 2018,5,900 showed up. It could have mentioned that, in 2017, 7,000 attended. It could have mentioned, as last year’s item in the same publication did, that the record attendance came in 1998, with 18,707.
It’s unclear why the trend has begun moving so sharply in the wrong direction. Yes, the event can be viewed online; but home games can be seen on TV, too. Fans still show up for the real thing -- and Packers fans used to show up in much bigger numbers to witness the annual shareholder meeting.
Maybe two straight years of no playoffs and skepticism about where the team is going from here under a first-year, first-time head coach is starting to poke holes in hearts filled with cheese. Or maybe, given that it’s been several years since the team sold new shares of non-stock stock, the novelty that comes from legitimately being able to refer to the team as “we” has worn off.
Regardless, the owners of the team aren’t as engaged as they were not that long ago -- and definitely not as engaged as they were in 1998.
