Main Street Sports Group, the parent company which owns and operates the 15 FanDuel Sports Network channels across the country, continues to reshape its programming strategy.
According to a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, Main Street is entering into a content partnership with Omaha Productions, the company co-founded by Peyton Manning and longtime sports media executive Jamie Horowitz. Per Karp, the partnership will involve Omaha producing new content for FanDuel Sports Network. Omaha announce details about the new content in the future.
Former ESPN content head Norby Williamson, who departed the network last year and landed at Main Street in January, spearheaded the deal with Horowitz, his former colleague at ESPN.
“Omaha sets the bar for creative excellence and storytelling and content and all those things, and we bring scale and opportunity and expertise,” Williamson told SBJ. “If there are specific things that we create together or Omaha creates that we can distribute in a certain market, that’s tremendous. But through our 15 networks and our linear reach — that’s over 30 million linear homes.”
Omaha Productions is perhaps best known for producing the ManningCast, ESPN’s alternate broadcast for Monday Night Football in which Peyton and Eli Manning chop it up with celebrity guests while watching the game. The show has been a roaring success on social media, and regularly contributes around one million viewers to the overall audience for Monday Night Football.
Beyond that, Omaha has produced nearly a dozen iterations of its Places series, featuring athletes from the Manning brothers to Abby Wambach to John McEnroe and David Ortiz. Omaha also developed the recently released series Chad Powers.
As for the FanDuel-branded networks, Williamson has been on a mission to retool how his channels go about programming. The channels are set to debut a “whip-around style” pregame show hosted by former SportsCenter star Stan Verrett later this month. Mike Golic and Mike Golic Jr. are hosting a show for the networks. And now, Omaha will contribute to the FanDuel Sports Network schedule.
“They’re the local fans who have an incredible passion for their local teams and that speaks directly to what Omaha is trying to do,” Horowitz said of FanDuel Sports Network’s audience.
The challenge, of course, is creating broad-based programming that still appeals to the local fan, regardless of what market they reside.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.