You’ve seen the hit “Monday Night Football” simulcasts featuring Peyton and Eli Manning. There’s “Quarterback” on Netflix and documentaries touching on some of sports’ iconic moments and figures. But the company behind all that was born from a phrase Manning used to change up a play: “Omaha.” Omaha Productions, the media company created by Super Bowl-winning QB Peyton Manning, has become more of a known name since its inception in 2020. It’s helped create content that’s gone on to firmly plant itself in the cultural zeitgeist. Cynopsis Sports spoke with Head of People Ashley Braband, who’s one of the company’s first employees and been with Omaha since Day 1. 

Omaha Productions has ascended rapidly since its creation a few years ago. What have been the organizational keys to making sure the company not only grows but continues to improve its quality?

I think what’s special about Omaha is that we’re all really united behind our mission to create content that uplifts and unifies. From day one, we’ve been very intentional about bringing in folks that truly embody that ethos; our unofficial motto is, “Work hard and be nice to people.” To remind ourselves of that every day, we framed that quote and put it next to the entryway in our office. And that focus on hard work and the importance of relationships is passed down directly from our leadership. Peyton and Jamie are the hardest-working people I’ve ever had the pleasure of learning from. No one puts more into this company than they do, and frankly, it’s rather inspiring.

Does it help that our other employees are wildly talented and remarkably passionate? Of course, it does! But I think it’s our collective dedication to really working together as a cohesive team that has enabled us to grow and improve so rapidly. 

For someone who’s been there from the start, what has the journey of being part of a new company taught you?

How incredibly fast things can grow! And how much really goes into building a company. Many of us came from previous experience at big networks, where everything is already well established. When you’re building something from the ground up, you get a crash course in understanding exactly how much work it takes. Luckily, Peter Chernin and the team at North Road provided invaluable guidance in that regard.

But one thing I could never have predicted is how quickly you need to be able to pivot. For example, when we launched the ManningCast in September of 2021, we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of social buzz it generated, and we figured we needed to bring in someone who really knew the social space. So we recruited Kristen Herlihy from Fox Sports, who is incredibly creative and really understands the digital world. But a month or so into her tenure, we launched the Branded Content side of our business – and it was clear from the start that Kristen would be the best person to run it. So about 6 weeks in, her job title and role completely changed! And we’ve seen that story repeat itself for many of our employees, myself included. 

One of the benefits of being a small group is that you really get to learn each other’s superpowers, and one of the truly amazing things about Omaha is that our leadership is willing to embrace that. Peyton and Jamie have given our folks the opportunity to succeed in areas where they have natural talent but may not necessarily have established experience. That’s how you see someone like Ben Brown, who was a junior agent at CAA, grow into the leader of our Scripted business within a year. (And he has already sold projects that are now in production!) Hard work, belief in your talent, and adaptability can lead to some amazing results.

What roadblocks did you/Omaha encounter in its early days, and how did the company overcome them?

The company launched in December of 2020 and within 6 months was already producing 40 hours of content – across Abby’s Places, Eli’s Places, Peyton’s Places, and Rowdy’s Places. When I joined the team in June, I got to see firsthand how much Omaha benefited from the incredible teamwork and partnership of NFL Films. The strong leadership of people like Ross Ketover and Neil Zender helped Omaha generate some early successes, which opened the door to even more opportunities.

We were so eager to prove ourselves and keep the momentum going that we didn’t want to say no to a single project. But at the same time, we were trying to establish the building blocks of our company. So we were really constructing the plane while flying it! 

Hiring became a crucial part of trying to keep up with our growth, and the team we put together is incredible. Everyone dove in head first, working their butts off to ensure we could continue to produce premium content at an accelerated pace.

I’ve always been curious about how a production company identifies and chooses a subject/topic to explore more. What’s the creative process like at Omaha, and what’s done to ensure the productions would resonate with fans?  

At Omaha I feel like each subject/topic has its own origin story. For example, when Peyton was at Tennessee he saw Pat Summit led the Lady Vols to back-to-back national championships in basketball. That experience was really meaningful to Peyton, and it kicked off both a lifelong friendship with Pat Summit and also a deep appreciation for women’s college hoops. 

Fast forward to the 2023 NCAA tournament, when Peyton recognized that women’s college basketball was having a real moment; he pushed Colin Campbell and our development team to come up with show ideas to spotlight the sport. They thought identifying and following a couple of players – all with different backstories and representing different parts of the country – would be a powerful approach. So Peyton went to work recruiting.  

It started on a Zoom with Caitlin Clark the summer before her senior year. From there, we got South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso and UCLA’s Kiki Rice on board. Once we had such amazing talent locked in, Brian Lockhart, who oversees Original Programming at ESPN and who has also been a champion for the sport, gave us the green light – and “Full Court Press” was born. 

It certainly helped that we got a bit lucky with casting, as both Caitlin and Kamilla made it to the national championship. But when “Full Court Press” premiered in May, the entire Disney company got behind it, giving it linear airings on ABC as well as distributing it on both ESPN+ and Hulu. (If you haven’t checked it out yet, you definitely should.)

How important is it to also have good relationships with various professional leagues so that Omaha Productions is allowed to have access to provide a “behind the scenes look”?

We couldn’t do what we do without our partners. At Omaha we firmly believe that relationships matter the most. Not just with the leagues, whose collaboration is crucial to ensuring the access that so many fans crave, but also with our production partners. Being able to work with other really talented teams, like Connor Schell and the folks at Words & Pictures, enables us to elevate our content even further. 

It’s also incredibly valuable to have strong relationships with the networks and streamers where our content is airing. Oftentimes we want to try something a little outside the box, so being able to have an open conversation with someone like Gabe Spitzer at Netflix or Burke Magnus at ESPN to get the creative permission to push those boundaries – is huge. 

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, is establishing strong relationships with the athletes and other on-air talent we are working with. Building a foundation of unbreakable trust with them is critical, and that comes from Peyton. He understands better than anyone how hard these people work, and the level of vulnerability it requires to allow cameras into your everyday life. It is wildly important for us to approach that access with the appropriate respect and consideration it deserves every single time we shoot.

Considering the well-regarded productions Omaha has been involved with, such as the ManningCast and “Quarterback,” in your view, what’s to come?

Peyton has admitted it’s a bit of a cheesy football cliché, but with Omaha, we wanted to start by throwing little completions, then bigger completions, and then maybe eventually a touchdown. Luckily that model worked for us, and we’ve had some pretty successful projects that have made us very proud internally.

But even as Omaha continues to grow, we find that it’s more important than ever to hold onto our core values: to create content that uplifts and unifies. Whether that’s in branded content, the audio space, unscripted or scripted, you can see that in everything we do. We make content that celebrates – and we hope we can continue to do that in various places. 

When we first launched, we focused on sports (naturally). But in the last year or so we’ve expanded beyond sports to push our values into other areas. We did a military show called “Beyond the Battlefield” with History, we’re working on a country music show with Luke Bryan for Hulu, and we sold a movie (an actual movie!) to Amazon. And we want to keep going, to expand even further into other areas that can inspire people.

But in the meantime, we’re going to keep growing as an organization, and we want to let our culture guide us. Work hard and be nice to people. Focus on executing each little completion. We have a strong team that is well-prepared to tackle whatever challenges lay down the road, and I’m excited to see what comes next!