Packers Say Changes To Critical Law Pose “Existential Threat” To Future In Green Bay

Tom Tiffany Working On Committee That’s Threatening Green Bay Packers—And Chooses To Stay Silent

Barnes to Tiffany: Do You Represent Packer Fans Or Out-Of-State Billionaires?

The Packers are sounding the alarm—Tom Tiffany and MAGA Republicans in Congress are changing a decades-old law that could force them to leave Green Bay.

Tiffany sits on the House Judiciary Committee where he and his allies are working to rewrite the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961,which allows the NFL to pool its TV deals and split money equally across all 32 teams.

If they succeed in changing this law, small-market teams like the Packers simply won’t be able to keep up with teams in big markets like the Bears, Cowboys, or Giants—teams all owned by billionaires.

The Packers’ spokesperson called it an “existential threat” to the team’s future in Green Bay, and when they asked Tiffany for comment, he said nothing.

Maybe Tiffany’s silence is coming from the fact that rival NFL owners have donated thousands of dollars to the NRCC and RGA—the same groups that bankroll his campaigns—who have a direct interest in tearing down the winningest franchise in NFL history.

The following is a statement from Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes:

“Tom Tiffany is working on the very committee that could kill the Green Bay Packers—and he chooses to say nothing.

“He and his MAGA allies are working to gut the very law that keeps small market teams like the Packers in cities like Green Bay. Even though the Packers themselves have called on him for help—he has stayed silent.

“Tom, Packer fans want one answer: whose side are you on? Ours—or your billionaire NFL donors who’d love nothing more than to move our team?”

Read more below:

Heartland Signal: Barnes to Tiffany: Do you represent Packer fans or out-of-state billionaires?

[Rich Eberwein, 4/16/26]

  • The Green Bay Packers’ survival in the NFL’s smallest market is partially a product of federal law — a legal shield that Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mandela Barnes claims is now under threat from Congress and his potential opponent this November, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI).
  • The Packers sent a letter to Wisconsin’s congressional delegation last month sounding the alarm on how potential changes to the SBA, which are being considered by the House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust, could threaten the team’s future.
  • “Put simply, any disruption to the current SBA model eliminating our ability to negotiate as the NFL writ large, would pose an existential threat to the Green Bay Packers and their existence in Green Bay as we know it,” said Packers director of public affairs Aaron Popkey in the letter.
  • Barnes, who served as Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor from 2019-23, criticized Tiffany for not taking a stance on SBA changes in a statement to Heartland Signal. He says the Wisconsin congressman should have spoken out by now since he’s on the House Judiciary Committee, which is overseeing the issue.