Sports

Peyton Manning Sells His Stake In His 31 Papa John’s Restaurants

(Photo by Daniel Shirey/Getty Images)

Jena Greene Reporter
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Just days after the NFL and Papa John’s terminated their partnership, the pizza company suffered another major blow to its branding.

Peyton Manning announced on Monday that he would be terminating his stake with 31 Papa John’s restaurants.

The Denver Post reported Manning had already unloaded his stakes in 31 stores in the Denver area, but he will stay on as a spokesperson.

Papa John’s spokesman Peter Collin confirmed the split in an email.

“The franchisee that purchased the market is excited about the future of our business and assumed ownership of all Papa John’s locations in the Denver, Co., market on Feb. 26, 2018,” he said, adding that the company enjoyed “six successful and rewarding years,” with Manning.

It’s been a pretty rough past couple of months for Papa John’s. In November 2017, former CEO John Schnatter criticized the rash of National Anthem protests, claiming the NFL and its “poor leadership” had “hurt” his company.

Schnatter later stepped down in January, just under two months before the NFL officially replaced its sponsor with Pizza Hut.

I’m not an economic advisor but it doesn’t take a genius to know that the string of recent events are probably bad for business. Who knows, maybe the nation holds so much disdain for the NFL that it’ll rally around Papa John’s but the odds of that happening are slim to none. Aside from the fact that both Papa John’s and Pizza Hut are complete garbage, Pizza Hut’s probably going to come up victorious in this one. It’s pretty hard to survive a controversy, losing a CEO, losing a massive league sponsorship, and losing a partnership with a former NFL star all in under five months.

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