Final week, Peyton and Eli Manning wanted to announce the schedule for the sixth season of the ManningCast.
Omaha Productions may have issued a press launch or posted a graphic.
As an alternative, it made a 15-minute heist film.
ManningCast: Heist options roughly 40 cameos, together with Anne Hathaway, Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd, Larry David, Glen Powell, Jason and Travis Kelce and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The flowery quick culminates with the revelation that Peyton and Eli will name their first Tremendous Bowl collectively this season.
For Omaha president Jamie Horowitz, the absurdly bold video is definitely a reasonably good illustration of what the corporate has been making an attempt to construct.
“This video is making an attempt to be only a joyride of enjoyable,” Horowitz advised The Hollywood Reporter.
Additionally it is the newest proof that Peyton Manning and Horowitz might have discovered one thing more and more necessary within the sports activities enterprise: the best way to make an athlete manufacturing firm really work.
Athlete-backed media firms are all over the place. LeBron James has SpringHill. Stephen Curry has Unanimous Media. Tom Brady and Michael Strahan co-founded Faith of Sports activities with Gotham Chopra. Tennis star Coco Gauff, nonetheless solely 22, is now constructing iROC Media Group.
However turning an athlete’s superstar right into a sustainable firm is much tougher than launching one.
As The Hollywood Reporter and Sportico just lately explored, the long-term problem is constructing a enterprise that finally turns into greater than its well-known founder. Omaha is especially fascinating as a result of it has already made vital progress towards that objective. Peyton and Eli Manning appeared in additional than 70 p.c of Omaha tasks early within the firm’s life. Right now, they seem in solely a couple of quarter.
That evolution started with a partnership between two folks with very totally different talent units.
Manning introduced probably the most trusted personalities in American sports activities, extraordinary relationships and an intuition for what feels genuine to athletes. Horowitz introduced greater than twenty years of tv expertise, together with creating personality-driven programming at ESPN and Fox Sports activities.
That mixture factors to a bigger lesson within the athlete-media enterprise: behind many profitable athlete manufacturing firms shouldn’t be merely a well-known athlete, however an skilled operator.
LeBron James constructed SpringHill alongside longtime enterprise accomplice Maverick Carter. Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media is run with Erick Peyton, a veteran producer and entrepreneur. Faith of Sports activities paired Tom Brady and Michael Strahan with filmmaker Gotham Chopra. And Gauff has partnered her new iROC Media Group with Faith of Sports activities, giving the younger tennis star a longtime manufacturing infrastructure whereas she stays targeted on her enjoying profession.
The athlete provides one thing a standard media govt can not manufacture: authenticity, entry, relationships and a direct reference to followers.
The operator provides one thing equally necessary: the power to show these benefits right into a repeatable enterprise.
Which means understanding what networks and streamers will purchase, creating codecs somewhat than merely one-off tasks, hiring producers, managing budgets, working with advertisers and, maybe most significantly, understanding when a challenge mustn’t require the athlete to look in any respect.
For Manning and Horowitz, the concept was by no means merely to make Peyton Manning tv reveals. It was to make use of Manning’s credibility and entry as the muse for a broader media firm.
ManningCast grew to become the breakthrough. Its mixture of elite soccer evaluation, sibling humor and sudden superstar visitors turned an alternate ESPN2 telecast right into a franchise. It gained a Sports activities Emmy and helped set up a template that different networks have since tried to duplicate.
However Omaha saved increasing.
Peyton’s Locations grew to become a complete Locations franchise constructed round different athletes. Netflix’s Quarterback expanded into Receiver and different athlete-driven documentary storytelling. A bit created for Eli’s Locations, wherein Eli Manning disguised himself as a university quarterback named Chad Powers, grew to become a scripted Hulu sequence starring Glen Powell.
That final instance could also be particularly necessary.
In 2025, Omaha signed a first-look scripted tv cope with Disney’s twentieth Tv protecting comedies, dramas, restricted sequence and grownup animation. What started as sports activities content material was turning into mental property able to touring into solely totally different genres.
Buyers observed.
Patrick Whitesell’s new Silver Lake-backed enterprise selected Omaha as its first funding in 2025, becoming a member of Peter Chernin’s North Street as a minority investor. The transaction valued Omaha at greater than $750 million, in accordance with The Hollywood Reporter/Sportico. When the transaction was introduced, trade sources mentioned Omaha had elevated each its income and revenue yearly throughout every of its first 5 years.
The corporate has additionally diversified past conventional tv economics.
Omaha now produces commercials and branded leisure involving athletes together with Baker Mayfield, Brock Purdy and Jordan Spieth. Branded content material and business campaigns have grown to roughly 1 / 4 of Omaha’s income, the best stage within the firm’s historical past.
That’s one other necessary distinction between an athlete’s manufacturing label and an precise media firm.
The superstar might get the primary assembly. It can’t be all the enterprise mannequin.
Horowitz has described Omaha’s technique in easier phrases: “Discover methods to convey folks collectively. Make content material that uplifts and unifies. Rejoice what unites us.”
That philosophy helps clarify one thing else concerning the firm. Omaha has resisted making Peyton Manning the topic of every thing. As an alternative, his sensibility turns into a filter for deciding what Omaha ought to make.
That’s exactly the problem dealing with the most recent era of athlete entrepreneurs.
Gauff has mentioned she hopes to construct an organization able to sustaining itself after she stops enjoying tennis. That could be the appropriate ambition. The most effective athlete media firms finally have to succeed in a degree the place the athlete stays extremely helpful however is not required for each piece of content material.
There’s a paradox to the mannequin. An athlete’s fame is usually the rationale the corporate can exist within the first place. But when that firm goes to change into actually helpful, it will definitely has to show it may exist past that fame.
Six years after Omaha’s launch, Manning and Horowitz seem nearer to that objective than nearly anybody.
And ManningCast: Heist is a becoming reminder of why.
Peyton Manning continues to be standing proper in the midst of the image.
However the firm round him has change into a lot greater.
