Quarterback, spokesman, and… media mogul?

After retiring from the NFL in 2016, Peyton Manning was inundated with offers to coach, become a broadcaster, and more. He rejected them all. Manning was done being the center of attention – always the bride, he longed to be the…er, bridesmaid (feels like a joke he’d make).

Fast forward to today, and Manning is running Omaha Productions, one of the fastest-growing media companies in the world.

🏈🤝 Driving the news: Per a Bloomberg report published yesterday, Omaha Productions has closed ~$10 million in funding from Peter Chernin, a media-mogul and former right-hand man of Rupert Murdoch, in a deal valuing the company at $400 million.

Though staying out of the limelight hasn’t exactly been easy. In fact, Omaha’s first two successes – ESPN’s Peyton’s Places and the “Manningcast” – both have Manning’s name right in the title.

But like the universe itself, things at Omaha are expanding – especially after the recent funding. Some projects coming down the pipeline:

• Quarterback: A Netflix docuseries following NFL quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota – all of whom were mic’d up for every single game of the 2022-23 season.
• The Einstein Challenge: Two experts compete to see who can better explain a complicated idea to a panel of children. Einstein will air on The HISTORY Channel.
• What Are The Odds?: In development at NBC, Odds is a workplace comedy set in a Vegas sports book about all the non-sports bets – friends, spouse, and job – we make in life.

📺 Zoom out: Manning certainly isn’t the first athlete with dreams of an entrepreneurial second act. And while there are plenty of success stories – LeBron James' SpringHill Entertainment, for example – not all such ideas go to business heaven. In 2006, former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling founded the video game company 38 Studios. Six years and one game release later, the company went bankrupt.