Matthew Berry won’t be on the gridiron on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, but he will notch a milestone for football when NBC Sports begins its five-hour Super Bowl pre-game show at 1 p.m. ET.
Berry will be the first fantasy sports analyst and commentator to appear as part of a Super Bowl host network’s pre-game show. It’s sign of how institutionalized fan-driven fantasy sports ventures have become.
For a former TV writer who started out calculating sports stats by hand at age 14, being welcomed on to the set of an official Super Bowl pre-game show is something still Berry can’t quite believe is happening.
“The fact that a guy like me is going to be on a Super Bowl pre-game show — it’s crazy,” Berry tells Variety.
Those who partake in fantasy sports create their own team rosters based on the active player list for each of the NFL’s 32 teams. Then they track the performance of each player week by week as the NFL season unfolds, in competition with dozens if not thousands of other players to assemble the highest-performing roster based on each player’s performance stats. As such, what matters most is the touchdown, passes, rushing yards, et al put up by individual players rather than the win-loss record of each team.
The wagering aspect of fantasy sports that has become heightened in the era of legal online betting and prediction market services. But the core of the appeal of fantasy sports is the joy of tracking each week’s games and yakking about it with sports-crazy friends, Berry emphasizes.
“What fantasy football has done is it’s brought people closer to the game. It’s given them interest in players and teams that they normally would not care about,” Berry says. “And it’s helped elevate every single game. Every game matters now.”
At a time when players are more accessible to fans than ever through social media, fantasy football offers a further boost as fans scour team rosters for high-performing players. Berry points to the trajectory of Michael Wilson, who is a wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals.
“They were one of the worst teams in the NFL in [2025], and so he’s not somebody who is on the national radar of football fans,” Berry explains. “But every single person that plays fantasy football knows exactly who Michael Wilson is, because over the second half of the year this year, when Jacoby Brissett became the quarterback of the Cardinals and [Cardinals’ wide receiver] Marvin Harrison Jr. went down with injury. Michael Wilson became one of the best wide receivers in fantasy football, putting up just monster points week after week in losing efforts for Arizona. There are 25 players at any given time who are always household names that everyone knows, regardless of who your team is. Everyone knows who Aaron Rodgers is. Everyone knows who Patrick Mahomes is, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, etc. But fantasy football allows you to become fans of so many more players.”
Berry got his start in the early 1990s in early internet chat rooms and sports-centric bulletin boards. Gradually, he gained more prominence and he rode the wave of interest in fantasy sports to an on-air gig at ESPN in 2007. He’s had tours at Fox Sports and other TV and digital outlets. At present, he works for NBC Sports, which has this year’s big game starting at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday. The Super Bowl is typically the year’s most-watched TV program.
Berry studied screenwriting at Syracuse University and then headed west. He wound up working on TV series including Fox’s “Married With Children,” CBS’ “Ink” and NBC’s “Conrad Bloom.” In 1999, Berry was recruited by the startup Rotoworld site to write a column about fantasy sports. That was his foot in the door in turning fantasy sports into his vocation and in building his media profile as an authority in the space.
The NFL cites the growth of fantasy sports as a big factor in bringing casual, younger and more diverse fans into the football tent. Berry feels it’s a great leveler, especially in business settings where employees put their own pools together. With social media platforms, it’s easier than ever for groups large and small to assemble their own leagues. What the game of bridge was to socializing in the 1950s, fantasy sports is in the modern era.
“It’s a way for friends to get together, co-workers to get together, family, college roommates,” Berry says. “It’s the new poker game, it’s the new bachelor party, it’s the new golf game. It’s a way for people to interact socially. It’s a way for the CEO and the kid in the mail room to interact some way.”
variety.com
#Fantasy #Sports #Expert #Matthew #Berry #Preps #PreGame #Show #Debut
