Mike Tannenbaum cites The 33rd Team's Series B funding as 'transformational moment' in shift to technology focus
Published about 14 hours ago • 4 min read
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The 33rd Team wraps up multimillion Series B round of funding
An image from The 33rd Team's website.
The 33rd Team has been an interesting company to track over the years. They started as what was largely a football media company focused on the NFL, using founder and CEO Mike Tannenbaum's connections from his decades in that league to stand out in a crowded space. Following a 2020 soft launch and a 2021 full launch, they brought in some big executive names in 2022, including former MLB deputy commissioner Tony Petitti (now the Big Ten commissioner) and former Fox Sports president of production John Entz. The company continued to expand its content from there, especially in podcasting, but 2024 also saw them start to shift towards building out their own technology and analytics offerings and using those to consult for teams instead of making them available publicly.
That shift was particularly seen with the cuts the 33rd Team made around the 2025 NFL Draft, which saw them reducing the amount of written content they'd been producing. Now, while their site does still feature written pieces and some prominent podcasts (perhaps especially Check the Micwith Pro Football Focus vets Steve Palazzolo and Sam Monson and The St. Brown Podcastwith NFL brothers Amon-Ra & Equanimeous St. Brown), they're much more focused on consulting. Their various deals there have included consulting for the New York Jets around their head coaching and general manager hires in 2024, consulting for the University of Washington on how to maximize revenue-sharing with players, and several not-publicly-revealed contracts with NFL and college teams. And that approach seems to be going well for them, as their announcement of completing a eight-figure Series B funding round Tuesday illustrates. Here's more from that:
The latest round features notable investors including Liberty Media, FORTA Advisors, Autumn Road, Dan Senor, Nick Gross, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan Moore, Greg Ciongoli, George Pyne, John Low, and Silver Falcon Capital (the family office of Brian France, former NASCAR CEO). The company also expanded its cap table with some of the sharpest football minds in the game, including NFL alumnus Justin Pugh and former head coach Matt Patricia.
"This is a transformational moment for us," said Mike Tannenbaum, CEO of The 33rd Team. "It's a powerful validation of our vision and the new direction we're embarking on as a company. The guidance from our investors – spanning across elite coaching, global media, technology innovation, and more – is an invaluable asset as we build the future of football."
The round, initiated in early 2024, signaled the company's strategic pivot away from content and media, toward technology innovation. In fewer than 17 months, The 33rd Team has taken its Zenith platform from concept to market adoption, securing deals with four NFL teams, a promising start that captured over 10% of the league for the inaugural 2025-26 season. These collaborations provide advanced on-field metrics and analytics, while positioning the company to accelerate its technology roadmap and expand its footprint across the league.
"Sports ownership is entering a period of rapid modernization, driven by private investment and aggressive adoption of next-generation technology," said Ryan Moore, Founder of Revenant VC. "With AI accelerating this shift, it's clear that organizations must evolve or fall behind. The 33rd Team is at the forefront of this transformation, equipping teams with the intelligence needed to navigate the competitive landscape both on and off the field."
What is The 33rd Team actually providing to NFL organizations? Well, Tannenbaum offered some insights there in an interview with Erich Richter of The New York Post, also discussing why the company's made this shift to a consulting and technology focus:
"We did a lot with coaches, we were a media company for a while, and we still have a very robust podcast offering, but where we spend almost all of our time and what we are raising money for is where we believe the future is in data and technology."
..."It’s information that we collect that’s available to teams after games," Tannenbaum said. "We collect data on the team’s behalf, and we give them what we believe is very actionable, accurate and timely reports after the game."
..."What we try to do is give teams information based on what happened in the game … We are just in the information-gathering business, so they can make their own decisions," Tannenbaum said.
"To take you behind the curtains, it’s a very formulaic approach when you’re in the NFL. Every minute matters. When you get the game over, you have basically 24 hours, good or bad, to do the autopsy. Very quickly, you’re going to your next opponent."
This fits with some larger shifts that we've seen in the sports analytics space over the last decades. Many of those movements started internally with teams (famously including the Oakland A's, as described in the Moneyball book and film), then went to the public with sites such as Baseball-Reference, Fangraphs, and Pro Football Focus. And some of The 33rd Team's initial content focus was in those areas.
But the last decade in particular has seen a retrenching of the team-focused idea, with teams often hiring prominent analytics writers to produce internal-only work for them. And The 33rd Team's current approach brings an interesting twist to that; they're offering internal analytics, but for a number of teams rather than just one organization. We'll see how that shift from media to tech and analytics works out for them in the long run, but the scale of investment they've pulled in here and the names they have attached bode well.
