Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions is all over the news this week.
In addition to revealing details about company strategy and background in a Bloomberg piece, news broke that Omaha has accepted outside investment from Peter Chernin’s North Road.
Via Cynthia Littleton at Variety:
The deal brings an influx of capital to Omaha and it allows the company to tap into the production and distribution infrastructure that Chernin is building through North Road, which launched last year with backing from private equity giants Providence Equity and Apollo Global Management. North Road is in assembling a roster of content banners with the goal of creating a strong independent source of TV and film titles for buyers, particularly those outside the U.S.
According to Bloomberg, terms value the company at over $400 million. Obviously having an experienced strategic partner like Chernin on board is only going to help as Omaha continues to expand and branch out into a variety of projects with different networks and streamers.
And as the Variety piece notes, things are indeed already in motion:
Omaha is already co-producing projects with North Road-affiliated Words + Pictures, which is headed by former ESPN programming executive Connor Schell. Omaha made a splash starting with the 2021 football season with the launch of its “ManningCast” alternative telecast of “Monday Night Football” featuring Manning and his brother Eli Manning, a fellow retired NFL quarterback, commenting on the game in real time with guests for ESPN 2.
Should Omaha continue to grow (not a given, of course, but given everything that’s happened so far it’s hard to bet against it), Manning might end up being one of the few athletes to achieve billionaire status. If that happens, we might be looking at a future NFL team owner, which would be quite the career arc.
In any case, it’s wild how much of this can be traced back to the simple fact that the Manningcast worked as a fun alternative to the standard Monday Night Football broadcast.
[Variety]
