Zwift and the Green Bay Packers

Huh? What do Zwift and the Green Bay Packers have in common? Not much, for now.

The Packers are a publicly owned team - owned by fans of the team, with over 360,000 shareholders. The shares are not like your normal stock market shares - the stock pays no dividends and isn’t tradeable or saleable. There’s hardly even a point to owning more than one share because the articles of incorporation prohibit any individual from becoming too powerful. No one can own more than 200,000 shares (there are 5,011,558 shares outstanding). The stock isn’t currently available, having most recently been sold in a 2011 offering, but the price of a single stock in the last offering ($250) raised substantial sums for a stadium expansion and other improvements and bought shareholders a souvenir certificate to hang up on the wall. So, what’s my point?

Zwift, as far as I know, is still privately held. Some day, they’re likely to go public with an IPO on Wall Street. There is likely to be a feeding frenzy, like there often is, with the new stock offering with buyers of the stock spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Zwift needs money to continue it’s expansion - new worlds, the new mountain biking initiative, and so on. Why not raise funds directly from us Zwifters, a la the Green Bay Packers? I’d be willing to pay something (probably not $250, though) for a share of Zwift with no voting rights, no dividends, no nothing except my enthusiasm and admiration for the platform. Wouldn’t it be a cool way to raise money and make Zwifters feel like they’re a bigger part of something already big? A Zwift stock certificate would look pretty nice on the wall of my pain cave, too!