The NFL’s Draft Day Fantasy

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0:42Congratulations! You made the varsity podcast. My name is John Aranda and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, Matthew Barry returns to the pod. Yes, the fantasy sports guru. But we're going to hit more than just fantasy. Matt is conversant on so many sports business topics. Let me tell you, this is going to be a lot of fun. But before we get to Matthew Barry, today is Sunday, April 19th. And here's what I'm watching. Things are not looking good for Live Golf right now. Now, the Saudi-funded golf tour has enough funding to finish out this season. But after that, who knows?

1:22Several reports have said that the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, is going to pull its funding after this season, which almost certainly means that the money-losing golf outfit is going to close up shop. But I have a bunch of sources who have worked with the Saudis, and they tell me that I should stay open-minded about all of this. One executive told me that the Saudis have a lot of pride and don't want to be embarrassed. He said that even after this interim decision, they could still reverse course and move forward with Live. Still, it's unquestionable that things are not looking good for the future of Live Golf, which got me to call around to various sports business types to see what effect Live's demise would have on the U.S.

2:06sports market. And the answer is virtually unanimously none. No effect at all. Fox Sports carries Live events, and let me tell you, they don't rate it all. In fact, Fox didn't top 500 ,000 viewers even once last year for a Live Golf event. That's an extraordinarily low number for a broadcast network. Fox only pays a nominal fee for Live rights. It's hardly a core property, and they certainly wouldn't miss it if they closed up shop. The PGA Tour may benefit from getting some big name golfers back. Bryson DeChambeau, John Rahm, Cam Smith, they're all still with Liv. But there's a real sense that these players aren't nearly as popular as they were when they left the PGA Tour for Liv.

2:50As one executive told me, the Liv golfers pretty much disappeared and new golfers have emerged on the PGA Tour. Okay, now let's get to Matthew Barry. Matthew Barry, first of all, Well, thank you for joining the pod again. Always great to have you on. And especially this week, NFL Draft Week. And I'm just trying to know, you've made your bones. As a talented Mr. Roto, you're a fantasy guru. What do you do on draft day? How much interest do you have from your business, as opposed to like a personal interest? You're a fan, so you're interested. From a business of watching these players and where they go?

3:33I mean, it's everything, right? At least specifically for me, fantasy. Like you've done some research up to here, but I always talk about the fact that fantasy success comes from two things. It's really only two things. You boil it down to that, and it is talent and opportunity, right? So number one is we know the talent. Okay, we've seen them in college. We have a sense of what we think of them as a player, but opportunity is the key, right? What team do they go to? What is their offensive opportunity? Will they have a chance to touch the ball? what's the scheme fit what's the coaching fit what's the role expected who else is around that player and so honestly once you know their NFL team that's when the fantasy analysis really starts and so it is really like it is day one and so look what we'll be doing for NBC is you know my fantasy football happy hour crew we'll be watching the we'll be watching the draft and we'll be putting out you know immediate reaction videos as well and we'll have a show around the NFL draft reacting to the draft, you know, almost in real time.

4:31And so, yeah, it's a big day. The other thing I want to say is, and we can go back to this, John, but I just want to say, you know, I'm back on the pod. You know how Saturday Night Live has their five-timers club? Like, you know, they all get a jacket. Like, I'm getting there with the varsity. At what point, what is the varsity going to give to guests that come on five times? I think this is my fourth appearance on the show? You know, we have, if you look over my, what is it? My right shoulder, there's the, the varsity jacket P for puck right in there. Some people think it's a Phillies jacket.

5:04It's not, it's a, it's a far says. So maybe we, we have to start making that for the, for the regulars on here. And you are, you're always very, very gracious with your time. So I totally appreciate that. One of the things that I love about the NFL draft is you have the draft on ABC, you have the draft on ESPN, and you have the draft on NFL Network. And so the different drafts are, the draft on ABC is for the casual fan. And the draft on ESPN, which is for, I think, a general sports fan. And then you have a draft on NFL Network that's really for the hardcore NFL fan. I happen to be, I probably shouldn't admit this on, I love the ABC one.

5:54I just love the storytelling around it. And I, you know, I, I can read the next day about who goes where and what the offense is going to be or what I just, I, I, I like the different stories that they have on ABC. Which one do you watch? I watch ESPN. I watch ESPN. I watch the ESPN one. You know, it's a, first I think it's, it's, it's habit. I also, you know, I like the presentation as well. And there's a soft spot for me, which I'll tell you something. This is a story that I don't think I've ever told publicly, but it just sort of reminds me. When I first came to ESPN, when I first was interviewing with them or talking with them, one of the things that John Kosner said to me, you know, John Kosner and John Walsh were the people that brought me into ESPN originally.

6:39And one of the things they said to me when I was talking with them was they said, we've been talking internally. you know at that point like they were like we feel like fantasy football has gotten big enough we feel like you know there's it's there's enough interest among our fans and our viewers they said so we've been talking internally that we need to find a mel kiper for fantasy football that was the phrase they used we want to find a mel kiper for fantasy football and we you know at that point i'd been doing some freelance stuff for them i'd done like some you know uh cold pizza if you remember that show and i'd done some stuff like on espn news with them and espn radio in la shout out of Mason in Ireland.

7:15And so, you know, but so that was that was ultimately why, you know, they ended up buying the Townsend Mr. Roto website and they moved me there in 2007. And that was the you know, that was the impetus. And so I have and I've told Mel that story privately, but I've just I always have a soft spot in my heart for Mel because of that, because of because Because of Mel's success, because of Mel's success, it basically, you know, having an incredibly singular focus and just, you know, in crushing that 365 days a year, his success, you know, in a lot of ways paved the way for me and certainly others to come through the door where, okay, hey, you know, somebody that's kind of this niche.

7:58And obviously now I've expanded what I talk about. But anyway, I have a fondness and soft spot for Mel Kuyper Jr. Always. Forgive my ignorance on this, but were you part of the ESPN? When you were at ESPN, were you part of their draft day production? Never. No, no, no. I mean, like that was again, I don't let's not make this about me. You know, let's yeah, that was about media. But just to answer that question, just to answer that question. No, I mean, like and this is one of the things I talked about when when I left ESPN to NBC. one of the reasons that I did that was that at ESPN, at least at the time, I felt like I, you know, the way ESPN was set up.

8:42Again, it's it's probably a very different company. You know, it was over four years ago. But when I was there, fantasy was in a completely different department than the NFL coverage. Just the way the organization had sort of split everything up. And at NBC, they were like, no, fantasy is going to be a part of our NFL coverage. right which is why like I'm on football night in America why I was at part of the Super Bowl pregame show and you know and so those things were important to me to be part of NFL coverage so so back to your answer no the fact is is because obviously ESPN's NFL draft coverage is part of their their NFL coverage and fantasy was considered sort of this siloed separate part of of the company.

9:23What's your favorite part of the draft? My favorite part of the draft? I love, I actually, the weird part is, is I like everything before the draft. I love the mock drafts. I love the, you know, the player analysis. I love breaking it all down. I'm in a dynasty league right now, John. We're doing our draft right now. Like this is such a weird, hardcore dynasty league that we draft our rookie players before we know their NFL team. So we're in the middle. We're like, you know, it's a five-round draft. I think we're in the middle of the third round in a slow draft. But so I love all the pre-draft process.

10:00I love all the, you know, analysis and everything like that. And then for me, like during the actual broadcast, for me, the part I enjoy is, again, I watch the ESPN broadcast and, you know, I love the music, right? It's just always, you know, da-da-da, you know, And then the highlights. Give me Mel Kye for talking over highlights. You know what I mean? In college, he's got a motor on him. Look at his arm length. Whatever. I'm in. I love it all. Yeah. As I said before, I like the sappy story. So that's great. Well, one of the reasons that you're almost a member of the five-timer club here on the varsity is you have such a good knowledge of, well, you're a fan.

10:45So you have a good working knowledge of sports media, of the sports business. You know, ESPN, just taking over the NFL Network, like as a fan, what are you expecting to see? What are you hoping to see in terms of the NFL Network programming moving forward? Well, first off, just I'll just say as a fan, just thinking of the sports business, the media, the sports media business. Sorry. I thought it was a brilliant move by Jimmy and ESPN. I thought it was just an absolutely brilliant move and it makes a ton of sense and just secures the future and expands their footprint. So I think it's a brilliant move.

11:27And very specific to me, ESPN, because they're going to take over NFL.com fantasy, ESPN is now going to be the number one place for fantasy. I mean, they already have the number one fantasy game, and now they're lapping the competition. I'll do respect to everyone else out there. I don't mean that. But like they're just going to have twice as many, if not more fantasy players than any other platform. So it's just from my world, it's just that's, you know, really kind of an impressive consolidation. And then in terms of just the programming, look, ESPN is they're good at what they do. Right. I mean, you know, I feel like that over the last few years that NFL Network has just, you know, there there hasn't been a ton of resources poured into NFL Network.

12:13and shows have gone away, some talent have gone away as well. And so I think it'll take them a little while to figure it out. I'm sure they're still trying to get their arms around and everything like that and try to get through the draft and figure out exactly what they have and how they want to handle it. But ESPN, if you forget ESPN as an entity and you just think about ESPN, like, okay, they've got ESPN and they had ESPN2 and they've got the SEC network And like they've done this before many times where they've ACC network, like they've thrown up a network, right? You know, a separate thing and been able to run that and been able to integrate that into larger ESPN, but also maintain an identity.

12:53And so I actually weirdly think it's a good thing because I think they'll put more resources into the NFL network. It's obviously from the outside, it appears to, you know, it's obviously a very important relationship between ESPN and the NFL. And so my expectation here is that like the programming on NFL Network will become more robust. There'll be more of it. There'll be more resources added there. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, ESPN is good at producing television. Yeah, I mean, you're so right. ESPN has a blueprint about how to do this. They have ACC Network. They have the SEC Network. Used to have the Longhorn Network just for the University of Texas.

13:31I know if Maryland was still in the ACC, I would be a heavy user of ACC network. Big Ten network is Fox, but it's a similar style concept. And I am a super user of the Big Ten network and watching things on the Big Ten network just because of that. I think ESPN certainly knows, from the SEC and from the ACC, if you are a super consumer of NFL programming, that's where you're going to want to go. Everything is going to be totally tailored to the NFL superfan more so than Stephen A can do on first take or SVP will do on the midnight or 11 p.m. sports center. Yeah, that's exactly right. Right. I mean, because ESPN, in a lot of ways, there's a lot of broad programming.

14:23And so you don't want to see the NFL is niche because it's not. Obviously, it is it is the foremost sport in America. But you're right. They can do deeper dive stuff if they want to over there. I think, you know, it gives them access to NFL talent as well. And so I think you'll see some some some cross pollination there, which is, you know, really helpful. You've already seen, you know, Rich Eisen a little bit. Right. And so they've started to sort of dip their toe in that. But like NFL Network has really good reporters, right, as well. And so you start thinking about like, you know, ESPN is just, you know, a huge news gathering over operation.

14:59But now they have even more resources to help them gather news of people that are covering the team and the league. And so, yeah, ultimately, you know, I'm excited to see how it all plays out. And like I said, on a personal level from fantasy, who is, you know, is somewhat about, you know, who takes a lot of pride in the growth of ESPN's fantasy game specifically, because that was, you know, a huge part of my life for 15 years. You know, when I got there, we were, ESPN was in third place, a distant third. And to see them now be number one by a country mile, as they say, is cool. That's cool to see, actually.

15:36Now, again, I'm preying upon your knowledge and interest of just general business moves, but I have been spilling barrels of ink on these NFL media deals. or the NFL, as anybody that listens to this podcast knows, is opening up their deals and trying to get billions of dollars more from CBS and Fox and ESPN and NBC and Amazon as well, you know, for deals that originally were supposed to go into the 2030s. But now they want to open them up. The networks want them to be opened up, too, so that they can get cost certainty going forward uh how much interest do you have personally and and and what's going on and i'm not going to ask you to comment on the uh on whether nbc is going to keep sunday night football or not but uh i thank you well it's a both of my favorite like to me do you you know i have a great relationship with rick cordell if he's not consulting me on that yeah really no yeah i mean again i have a great relationship with rick but it's not like he's uh he's calling and asking my opinion on that um uh so yeah i definitely love my great there uh well i i do i am a puck subscriber by the way um uh a proud one i read all the stuff and um so i have been following the stories and obviously it's very interesting right it's it's it's fascinating to see sort of where it goes and i've likened it to i think you're right in terms of everyone sort of wanting to get this done earlier i liken it to like nfl teams where they're like we want to we know this this star player's contract isn't due for another year, but we're going to open it up and sign them to a longer term extension because we, A, we want certainty to know like sort of where our salary cap is.

17:17We want to build around this player. And also we know that we think that in a year from now, whatever it costs to sign this quarterback, you know, whatever, it's$50 million a year now, but, you know, a year from now, it might be$55 million a year. The market continues to go up. So we'd rather just sort of let's lock it in right now. And so we know what those costs are. We know we've got this player locked up for X number of years, right? And so I think if you think about it from those terms, it makes a ton of sense from the network's point of view or from the broadcaster's point of view where they're like, the NFL is a star player, right?

17:51It is their star player. It's their franchise. And so knowing what you're going to be paying for the NFL and how long you have it and not being beholden to changing market conditions, like, makes a ton of sense. And obviously, as you've written, all I'm doing is parroting what you've written, John. But, you know, the NFL is not stupid. They sit here and go like, well, look at what the NBA just got, you know, and we're the NFL. No respect. I love the NBA. I'm, you know, a big fan of the NBA. But like, you know, it makes sense for them to, you know, kick the tires and see what people are willing to do, especially because, and I think you've written this, John, but like the CBS thing opens up because of the change of control with the Paramount.

18:34Right. So like there's a there's I mean, I'm I'm not in the weeds the way you are, but like there's now an opportunity. There's a contractual opportunity because the change of control with with with Paramount CBS that the NFL has the right to say, like, hey, you know, why don't we open this up? And then I think you sort of feel like, well, once that domino falls, assuming CBS Paramount does a, you know, does a new deal with the NFL and resets the market. Well, then the rest of the dominoes are going to fall. Right. It feels like. Yeah. The key is to me watching this is whether or not the networks just kind of say, you know what, we're going to go until 2030.

19:14And because that still is what four more seasons left. And who knows what the media you know, as well as anybody, like who knows what the media market is going to look like in four years and who's going to be bidding on these. And it would certainly be a roll of the dice because there's not one television network that wants to experience living without football, without the NFL, more than just football without the NFL. But that's the key thing. And John, four years ago, you know, I mean, correct me on my map, but four years ago, I feel like Netflix, just as an example, Netflix was very public about, no, we are not interested in live sports.

19:57You know, they were asked about it multiple times. They were like, no, no, we're not interested in live sports. We're going to do what we do. And, you know, cut to last Christmas where they're broadcasting an NFL game, right? And so, too. And so, right, you never know, like, sort of how it emerges. You know, does Apple ever want to get into the mix of the NFL, right? And so you just start thinking about, you know, other companies and who knows what the media landscape looks like four years from now. Let me ask you a question, just as somebody that's on air. Take money out of this situation, because whoever pays you the most, you're sort of going to be, yeah, you know, I'll try, you know, streaming if they pay more, or I'll try cable if they pay more.

20:41everything being equal everybody's offering you the same amount of money what do you how do you tell the difference between a cable channel a broadcast channel or a streaming service you personally uh me personally I don't really I mean I think there's um god that's a good question um um that's a good question because it's it's both it's twofold so so let me riff a little bit and let you think about that uh just because like well yeah okay okay you went from espn which is not a small cable channel but it's a cable channel to a big broadcast station which has uh and and a show on that big broadcast station that has owned prime time television for I I always forget the number of years 13 years from 14 years i forgot number one prime yeah yeah yeah like but but i mean listen there's there's a power in broadcast television there there's no question but i mean i think from an on-air i mean like the differences between those like espn is ubiquitous right you walk into a any sports bar right you walk into any bar and you know chances are espn is on the TV.

22:02NBC, you know, NBC Sports is a division of NBC. Now it's a big division, obviously, and it's an important one. But like, in addition to Football Night in America and Sunday Night Football, like, we've got The Voice, and we've got The Tonight Show, and we've got Today. And, you know, I mean, like, there, you know, there's, there's a, you know, there's just a wide range of entertainment options, sports being one of them, as opposed to a cable channel where it's at least in the case of ESPN where it's 24 seven. But what I would say is, you know, and I think about my kids, like I have, you know, as you know, I have five kids, but, you know, in there, they're 27, 25, 21 and we have twin daughters at 14.

22:38My wife and I reset the clock. So we have, but like you ask them, what do you watch? You know, they'll say, what are you watching? We're watching TV and then I'll look and what they're actually watching is they're watching YouTube or Tik TOK, you know, like in terms of, And so what's that on? Is it on, you know, is it on CBS or is it on Prime? Is it on Netflix or is it on, you know, TNT? Like, I just feel like more and more these days, there's the consumer, as the consumers are the younger consumers, they get, um, uh, there's less in the mind of the consumer. There's less different differentiation.

23:15Right. You know, it's just like sort of, where do I watch? and especially when you think about like then you know you can watch net you can watch broadcast tv on youtube and it just becomes all more blurred and everyone's you know they're watching it on their phones as it is and and you know and and their devices and so you know i don't know um i don't know that there's i left i left sports business journal and at the very end of 2023 i joined puck in 2024 and starting in 2024 it was the very first time that that i wasn't able to hold a piece of paper that had a story with my and i i i thought during that process that was going to be really odd and i i to say i got over it it was actually even a thing you know and so it was kind of funny um uh that it was funny for me that it wasn't a thing like i i still have in the basement.

24:12My wife hates this, but I have boxes of old magazines, you know, just because I saved them.

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25:44your your kids in their 20s do they subscribe to multi-channel tv i think they mostly steal my passwords um to be honest with you you know uh if i'm if i'm being honest yeah i apologize to all the streamers but being honest um uh that's what i think they do but But no, I mean, they, you know, they, they, they, my 20, my 27 year old does have a cable package. My 25 year old does not. And my 21 year old's in college and he's not watching anything. He's having a blast. He's at Alabama. Roll Tide. When did you, I forget the answer to this question. When did you first start with fantasy? What year was that?

26:34what what was the first year that i i did it quote professionally the first year that i played the for even the first year that you played yeah 1984 i was in uh 1984 1984 i was 14 years old i um i was uh the the the original book the the rotisserie league baseball book had come out in winter of 1983. And so I, growing up in College Station, Texas, gave them Aggies, I found nine other people that wanted to try, that had also read the book and wanted to try this weird thing called Rotisserie League Baseball. And so we got together in the spring of 1984, the Fat Dog Rotisserie League, which is still together to this day, and had our first draft, an auction draft.

27:26And, you know, through my career, I've had the honor to meet Daniel Okren, who, you know, him and Glenn Wagoner wrote that book. And Daniel Okren is widely considered the man who invented fantasy baseball, invented Rotisserie League Baseball. And so I've met him. I've actually got to sit at a fantasy baseball auction with him one time, did a league with him one year. True honor. And so that league, when they published the book, they had a number in there or a service. Like if you wanted to, instead of keeping stats by hand, because again, this is pre-internet, this is pre, you know, you got the stats came out in USA Today once a week and you had to like calculate the stats, you know, for the entire week.

28:07But they had a statistical service that you could subscribe to and they would fax you. They would literally fax you the standings once a week. And so I remember talking with Daniel Okren and I said, I told him the story that I just told you. And I said, you know, we were the Fat Dog Rotisserie League in College Station, Texas. He says, like, I remember you guys well, Don Smith. He's our beloved commissioner for life, Don Smith. And just said we were one of the first 50. We were one of the, according to Daniel Okren, we were one of the first 50 fantasy leagues in the history of America. So there you go.