ESPN looks to continue to capitalize on America’s growing appetite for fantasy football. This season, on Sunday NFL Countdown Senior Fantasy Analyst Matthew Berry will have a prominent role on the broadcast.
According to The Legal Sports Report, it is a deliberate move by the network to better integrate fantasy football into their normal pregame coverage. Seth Markman, ESPN’s senior coordinating producer, told The Legal Sports Report:
I think we’ve come along way from the early days of fantasy, when I started doing this 10, 15 years ago, where we had a lot of discussions, let’s put our toe in the water on fantasy. We were really worried about the pregame shows; let’s not do much fantasy because we don’t want to lose the regular viewer or the football fan. Nowadays, we don’t really differentiate between the fantasy fan and the football fan.
Matthew Berry is going to be a much bigger part of our Sunday morning lineup on ESPN, you are going to see him on Sunday Countdown more than just a segment of fantasy football, which we have done over the past few years. We want to make him part of the discussion with the ex-players and coaches because that’s the way we believe our audience now consumes pre-game content.”
Berry is the author of The New York Times best-selling book, Fantasy Life. He is well known by fantasy football fans for his regular ESPN podcast, Fantasy Focus Football.
Before becoming a well-known fantasy analyst, Berry was a Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote for the sitcom Married with Children as well as the movie Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Berry frequently gives fantasy advice to celebrities such as this example with Jay-Z:
For fantasy advice you can follow him on Twitter or read his work on ESPN.