Chase Your Passion and Innovate
Award-winning sports analyst Matthew Berry is universally regarded as “the face of fantasy football.” After a successful career as a Hollywood writer, Berry pivoted to chase his passion and is now an Emmy-winning host for multiple shows on NBC and the founder of Fantasy Life. In this motivating talk, he offers insights about his journey creating an innovative career, and practical advice for those looking to become game-changers in any field.
Fantasy Focus: Analyzing the Draft and the Season
Award-winning NBC fantasy sports analyst Matthew Berry is the undisputed expert when it comes to analyzing the NFL draft, predictions for the upcoming season, and strategies for success. Universally regarded as “the face of fantasy football,” he has played a leading role in fueling the national growth of fantasy football and a sought-after commentator for his candid, entertaining perspective.
Universally regarded as “the face of fantasy football,” Matthew Berry, aka “The Talented Mr. Roto,” is a Fantasy Sports Analyst and Commentator for NBC.
Named the 2013 Marketer of the Year by the Academy of Marketing Science for his leading role in fueling the national growth of fantasy football, Berry previously served as the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN and was the most read weekly columnist on ESPN.com during football season. His annual pre-season "Love/Hate" consistently ranked among the top trafficked stories on ESPN for the entire year, while the in-season edition was the most read weekly column across the ESPN Fantasy App and ESPN.com.
Berry is an Emmy Award winner for his work on ESPN2's Sunday morning show Fantasy Football Now (the highest rated non-live event show on ESPN2). He also hosted the award-winning The Fantasy Show on ESPN+, regularly among the most watched studio shows on ESPN’s streaming service. Berry also appeared regularly across ESPN’s most popular television and radio shows including Monday Night Countdown, SportsCenter, NFL Live and ESPN’s annual coverage of the NFL Draft. And for the past five August’s, Berry somehow managed to broadcast live for 28 hours straight hours as part of ESPN’s popular “Fantasy Football Marathon” without getting himself fired.
Berry's multi-award-winning podcast Fantasy Focus: Football was ESPN’s most downloaded original podcast on a per episode basis and is regularly in the top ten in the sports category and the top 40 overall on iTunes during the season. In 2018, the show also made it’s debut on Twitter, broadcasting their show live every day on the popular social network, quickly becoming one of Twitter’s most watched and highest engaged show.
His first book, Fantasy Life (from Riverhead/Penguin Books) was a New York Times Bestseller, spending many months on the list. Inspired by the book, Berry’s Fantasy Life App is a robust social network for fantasy players and sports gamblers that has over three quarter of a million highly engaged users and was recently featured by Apple in their App store.
Speaking of social media, Berry was named to USA Today’s “NFL’s 100 most important people”, Sports Illustrated’s “Top 100 to follow on Twitter,” and to Mashable’s “32 Must Follow Accounts for NFL Fans,” He currently has over 1.5 million highly engaged social media followers.
Matthew started his fantasy sports career writing for Rotoworld (now NBC SportsEdge). He wrote for The Sporting News, was the national fantasy expert for Fox Sports Radio, wrote the daily fantasy blog on MLB.com and was a fantasy columnist for NBA.com. He was also a consultant to the NBA, helping shape it’s fantasy basketball strategy prior to joining ESPN. He started his own website TalentedMrRoto.com in 2004 and it soon became a leading and award winning source in the fantasy industry. The site was acquired by ESPN in 2007.
Named by his peers as the 2017 FSTA “Analyst of the Year,” Berry is one of four people to be named to the Hall of Fame for both the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. He has appeared on or in Late Night with Seth Meyers, The View, CBS This Morning, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, 60 Minutes Sports, CBS Sunday Morning, AdWeek, The Wall Street Journal, The NY Times, The Howard Stern Show, People.com and YES, that is him doing a cameo in Avengers: EndGame, helping Robert Redford recover a briefcase from Tony Stark and Thor.
In addition, he has done cameos on ABC’s One Life to Live, the FX comedy The League and the Pop TV / Netflix comedy sketch show Hot Date. He has played with The Globertrotters (and sank a 20 footer!), is a featured "tweeter" in the popular EA Sports Madden Football video game and gives fantasy advice to celebrities from Jay-Z to Chris Pratt. A co-founder of FantasyMovieLeague.com, which sold to National Cinema Media (NASDAQ:NCMI), Berry is a graduate of Syracuse University. He lives with his wife and children in Connecticut.