As they were introduced to the sold-out crowd of 300-plus people at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis on June 21, 2018, it hit home what they had done.
“The crowd goes bananas,” Mike Wright said. “Both Jason and I are on the verge of ugly crying because we’re so overwhelmed at the love that these people are sharing with us.”
The three friends receiving the adulation on the live tour had gone from working together at a tech startup to creating The Fantasy Footballers, America’s largest fantasy football podcast with 100 million downloads last year alone.
Wright (36 years old), Jason Moore (37) and host Andy Holloway (35) have a legion of devoted followers of their product, which ranked No. 1 in the sports and recreation category among Apple podcasts last year, even though none of the trio has a background in radio or broadcasting.
Each, however, brings a unique skillset to the podcast.
Wright, a former sound engineer, was the front man of a rock band, and Moore excelled at improv and was the lead in many school plays, which Holloway, who was a reporter at theNorthwest Valley Newsand Moore’s Centennial High School classmate in Peoria, Ariz., attended.
Holloway likes to tell the story that he first met Moore, a frequent target of his ribbing, when the elder Moore was the only non-freshman in his high school Spanish class.
But Moore did show his savvy in starting a content creation platform for Myspace before it pivoted to become Broken Bulb, a game development studio for Facebook.
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Moore, the co-owner of Broken Bulb, and Holloway, the chief operating officer there, needed an audio engineer to help create music and sound effects for games like My Town and Miscrits.
Wright — who is in charge of all the drops for the current podcast, including the playing of Kansas’ “Carry On Wayward Son” when running back Kerryon Johnson is referenced or a clip fromA Few Good Men to introduce their “Truth” segment — filled that opening for Broken Bulb.
“When I listened to his music,” Moore said, “I was like, ‘I have to have this guy.’”
While working together for about eight years, they learned how to promote and market the games. And during lunch breaks in 2014, Wright and Holloway started recording podcasts about their fantasy football league.
“We literally just turned on the microphone,” Holloway said, “and we’d make fun of the other members of our league.”
About a year later, Moore came on the airwaves with them, and they turned it into a public broadcast.
They attribute their subsequent popularity to their adherence to three main tenets: Levity, production value and accurate football information based on extensive research.
“Every show has to have these three things,” Wright said.
Those three pillars are part of each of their five shows a week (Monday through Friday during the NFL season) and two-to-three shows a week during the offseason.
The uniqueness of hosting a year-round fantasy football podcast, which was launched after the NFL season in February of 2015, added to their popularity.
“This (was) the gap in the market,” Holloway said. “It allowed us to develop a base of super competitive, super fantasy fans over that period of time in which we kind of were the only show in town.”
Now other fantasy podcasts are year-round, but The Fantasy Footballers got the early jump and grew a podcast that started in Holloway’s son’s bedroom to one that now broadcasts from a 2,000-square-foot studio in north Phoenix.
They have 20 employees, grossed a reported $1.75 million in 2017 and are in the midst of a national summer tour for the second year in a row.
In 2018 their revenue came from 45% advertising/sponsorship, 41% sales, 14%Patreon (a Kickstarter-like platform) and 1% miscellaneous affiliate residuals.
Their Ultimate Draft Kit is responsible for a large part of their sales. The Fantasy Footballers use their own algorithms and analytics to create projection models. FantasyPros.com grades their analysis highly, and the podcasters sold more than 37,000 of these kits in 2018.
Their advertisers and sponsors include Pristine Auction, Blistex’s Odor-Eaters (which is responsible for the “Stinker of the Week”) and FanDuel.
The membership platform, Patreon, helped the Fantasy Footballers create a sustainable product. When fans donate money, they become part of the #FootClan that receives access to a special episode every week, in which only their questions are answered.
“They’re supporting us, an independent company,” Holloway said. “There’s an underdog component that I think pulls people in, and we’ve tried to stay super committed to them, and they’ve stayed super committed to us.”
That underdog has become a favorite, generating 15 millions streams and 126,000 subscribers on YouTube in addition to their audio popularity.
Despite the increase in subscribers and listeners, The Fantasy Footballers have maintained the same style they had when they were doing a show during their lunch break. If they need a further reminder in humility, a sign in the break room of their office reads: “Remember how you got here. Remember why you do this.”
Holloway describes their style as making the listener feel like the fourth person at their table.
“We really try to bring sports information and make you a part of the conversation,” Holloway said. “It is a huge advantage to be great friends of one another and to have worked together.”
During the football season, the three friends gather every Sunday at their studio and watch every game on nine, 75-inch televisions. It allows them to closely monitor the NFL action while also further honing their camaraderie.
“Let’s say two of us are losing horribly in our main league,” Moore said. “We will be ordering some comfort food during the break of the day and we will get the worst garbage into our body we can as a way to cope with our losses.”
“Just look at us,” Holloway interjected, “and you’ll find out how our teams did last week.”
“If thing are going well,” Moore said, “we eat healthy.”
The obvious bond — and the dad jokes — is also a result of the three guys being in the same stage of life. All three are fathers with three kids and share a common objective.
“We are trying to put family first and not get overwhelmed by the business success financially,” Moore said, “(by) putting that ahead of other things we value more.”
