BREAKING: Teamworks to Acquire Pro Football Focus
Wide Left has learned that Teamworks will acquire football charting firm Pro Football Focus.
Wide Left has learned from multiple sources that Teamworks, a multimodal software and analytics company, will acquire the sports charting company Pro Football Focus at a valuation between $130 and $140 million. The deal could be executed as early as this week, according to one source.
Pro Football Focus has been the premier name in granular player performance tracking over the last decade and a half, but has faced questions about its ability to lead in that space after a spate of high-profile departures over the last three years — departures that have included front-facing, recognizable talent like Sam Monson and Steve Palazzolo and critical management and back-end staff, like Austin Gayle, Rick Drummond and Ian Perks.
PFF had opened itself up to private investment several years ago and secured a $50 million investment from Silver Lake, a private equity firm that has invested in the sports space across countries, including stakes in Manchester City FC, Madison Square Garden, Fanatics and Equinox.
That investment valued PFF at $160 million. Silver Lake’s goal was to refocus PFF so it wasn’t as reliant on its profitable business-to-business side (bringing in an annual revenue amount in the low eight-figures) and could expand into a theoretically uncapped consumer market. According to one source, PFF’s peak valuation was $223 million.
In short, Silver Lake hoped that PFF could do more than merely sell its product to NFL teams and expand its offerings to generate more revenue from everyday football content consumers.
Losing key personnel and allegedly suffering significant mismanagement over the past couple of years, PFF could never expand its footprint on the consumer side and now faces significant competition on the business-to-business side, competing with Sumer Sports and Telemetry (now also owned by Teamworks) for NFL teams' data and operational offerings.
As a result, PFF lost valuation nearly to the tune of $100 million, according to one source.
When asked, Pro Football Focus chose not to comment, releasing the following statement to Wide Left: “As a company, we do not speculate on market rumors.”
Neither Teamworks nor Dragoneer Investment Group, Teamworks’ top investor, returned messages for comment.
What is Teamworks?
Teamworks might be the most important analytics company you’ve never heard about. Valued at over $1 billion, Teamworks has acquired a number of sports analytics firms over the years, including those that might be considered direct competitors to Pro Football Focus in the business-to-business space.
