PFF Lays Off Several Employees Amid Company Sale

A slew of Pro Football Focus employees were laid off on Monday as Cris Collinsworth sold the company’s enterprise business side to Teamworks in a deal reportedly worth nine figures.

A source told Front Office Sports that PFF called employees to an all-hands meeting on Monday, during which it was announced that about half of them would be moving to the new company. PFF possessed both a content side and a data team—all 32 NFL teams subscribe to the company’s enterprise data set—and most of those who survived the layoffs were on the data side, a source said.

In the announcement of the sale, it was revealed that Collinsworth—NBC’s lead NFL color commentator—would retain control of the “consumer business,” meaning the content side of the company. It is currently unclear how many people were laid off in total and how many still remain with PFF. Among those to announce their departures on Monday were draft analyst Trevor Sikkema, fantasy football analyst Jon Macri, social media specialists Mike Kennedy and Beckett Mesko, NFL editor John Owning, writer Thomas Valentine, and designers Andrew Russell and Seth Reese. 

Arif Hasan, who writes the Wide Left Substack site, reported in February that Teamworks was believed to have paid between $130 million and $140 million to purchase PFF.  Hasan confirmed on Monday that the sale was worth more than $100 million.

Teamworks’s release announcing the acquisition said that the company “combines enterprise SaaS with proprietary data and advanced analytics to deliver intelligent products that power player evaluation, game strategy, performance development, and daily operations.”

“PFF’s enterprise business adds critical data to the foundation of Teamworks’ operating system,” the company added.

Media relations teams for Teamworks and PFF did not immediately respond to requests for comment from FOS.