Matthew Berry Explains Why He Went to NBC After 15 Years With ESPN
The fantasy guru reveals his two reasons for jumping from ESPN to NBC.
1. No one is more associated with fantasy sports than Matthew Berry. After being on the beat for 15 years at ESPN, Berry left the company in July and joined NBC in August.
Appearing on the latest episode of the SI Media Podcast, which dropped Thursday morning, Berry went into great detail while explaining why he decided to move on from the World Wide Leader.
Berry, who repeatedly said he had no ill will toward ESPN and that ESPN “did right by him,” cited two reasons for his departure.
“I wanted to be part of NFL coverage,” Berry said on the podcast. “I think that when you have a fantasy conversation, when you have a betting conversation, you’re having an NFL conversation. I don’t think they are separate. They were maybe back in the day.
“If you and I were to have a fantasy conversation right now, we’re talking ball. We have a slightly different lens on it, but it’s the same thing. You’re talking about players, you’re talking about matchups, you’re talking about the game and what you think will happen and what happened and why it happened.
“The NFL is the premiere sports league in the world and I believe fantasy is a massive way that fans engage with the NFL and I wanted to be more closely aligned with NFL coverage. I wanted to be a part of it.”
I pointed out to Berry, who said that he will be part of NBC’s main Football Night in America crew every Sunday night, that ESPN has an NFL package as well.
“I’ve done some NFL coverage over the years,” Berry said. “When I first started there I would do a segment on Sunday NFL Countdown. From the set of the fantasy show on ESPN+, we would do a 45-second hit that would run on Monday Night Countdown that was sponsored.
“Over the years I’ve popped up on NFL Live. I haven’t recently in the last couple years, but I was there 15 years so I’ve popped in and out of NFL coverage at ESPN.
“But in terms of where the company sits today, at least at the time that I was still there, the fantasy department and the fantasy coverage at ESPN and the NFL department and the NFL coverage are two separate entities.
“The people in charge of those entities are different people. There’s not a lot of overlap. Sunday NFL Countdown had their own producers and their own cast, and Fantasy Football Now on ESPN 2 Sunday mornings had our own production staff and a lot less promotion. So the answer is, yes, ESPN has a lot of NFL coverage and they do a really good job with it and they’ve been real successful with how they’ve approached it.
“Whether it was they just didn’t dig me or they just didn’t believe fantasy was a part of … I was never an integrated part of Monday Night Countdown or Sunday NFL Countdown, any of our biggest platforms. Even NFL Live.
“Not only was I never a big part of any of those shows, I never was going to be. And I knew that, and that’s no disrespect to ESPN. It’s not my job to run that company. The people that run the company made that decision and they’ve done very successfully. They’re running a business, and it works for them.
“But for me, it was important, and as it became apparent that there was a chance that I might leave ESPN, me and my agents had conversations, in some cases multiple conversations, with every NFL partner, and that includes ESPN, and we expressed a desire. We felt pretty confident that if we left ESPN that there would be an NFL broadcast partner that would want me to be a big part of their NFL coverage, not sort of off to the side, not like, ‘Oh, here’s a small clip of them from the show.’ That was really important to me.”
Berry explained the other reason why things didn’t work out with ESPN and why he landed at NBC.
“NBC said to me, ‘We know you have these businesses that you’ve started.’ These small businesses like FantasyLife.com, the Fantasy Life newsletter, the Fantasy Life apps, a lot of things under the brand of Fantasy Life.
“ESPN very graciously offered me a new three-year extension and a raise, but part of that offer was that I would have to get rid of all those side businesses that I had built up over the last couple years.
“My previous contract with ESPN, I had carve-outs for all those things.
“My previous deal was a seven-year deal and the sports landscape has changed significantly and something that they were O.K. with seven years ago. You know seven years ago betting was illegal, and so when they approved those seven years ago, they didn’t contemplate that those businesses—and neither did I—they didn’t contemplate that those businesses might get into sports betting and might get into paid content. Seven years ago, that was not a focus of ESPN or Disney where it is now. And so I think they felt like, again I don’t want to speak for ESPN, but I think they felt like from my perception that their opinion of those side businesses changed from seven years ago as to now in terms of competitiveness and what have you.
“[ESPN executive editor] Norby Williamson, who I like very much, and would work for Norby again, love Norby, I had a meeting with him and he’s like, ‘Listen, we love you here, we want you to be here as long as you wanna be here, but as the conversation continued, it was, ‘Here’s a new three-year deal, here’s a raise, but you have to get rid of these side businesses. And we want you to focus only on ESPN.’
“I certainly understand a corporation having that point of view, but for me, I spent a lot of time building these things up. We’ve raised investment money from investors, I have CEOs of these companies, we have full-time employees, all these companies have full-time employees and all of them signed on investing in the company or came to work because they thought I was going to be able to support them.
“It’s a different corporate structure, and the concerns that NBCUniversal has are different from Disney. I’m not saying they’re better or worse. They’re just different. So that was really important to me to be able to continue that, and NBC said not only will we let you continue it, we’ll support it.”
During the podcast, Berry talked about what ultimately led to his choosing NBC over other suitors, how legalized gambling has affected the fantasy sports world and how he navigates social media while dealing with angry fantasy football players.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
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Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.