The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. They are the third-oldest franchise in the NFL, established in 1919, and are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team based in the United States. Since 1957, home games have been played at Lambeau Field. They hold the record for the most wins in NFL history.
The Packers are the last of the "small-town teams" that were common in the NFL during the league's early days of the 1920s and 1930s. Founded in 1919 by Earl "Curly" Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun, the franchise traces its lineage to other semi-professional teams in Green Bay dating back to 1896. Between 1919 and 1920, the Packers competed against other semi-pro clubs from around Wisconsin and the Midwest, before joining the American Professional Football Association (APFA), the forerunner of today's NFL, in 1921. In 1933, the Packers began playing part of their home slate in Milwaukee until changes at Lambeau Field in 1995 made it more lucrative to stay in Green Bay full-time; Milwaukee is still considered a home media market for the team. Although Green Bay is the smallest major league professional sports market in North America, Forbes ranked the Packers as the world's 27th-most-valuable sports franchise in 2019, with a value of $2.63Â billion.