Latest news with #FantasyLife
Black America Web
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Black America Web
LeBron James, John Legend & More Invest $7 Million Into Fantasy Life Sports & Gaming Platform
Source: David Berding / Getty As fans wonder how many more seasons LeBron James will play in the NBA, the future Hall of Famer is already making sure he'll be busy once he hangs up his jersey. James has expanded his business portfolio by investing in the fantasy sports and gaming platform Fantasy Life, which was founded by OG fantasy football personality Matthew Berry. The four-time NBA champ is joined by childhood friend and business partner Maverick Carter and others, including businessman Gerry Cardinale, singer John Legend, and Fortnite co-creator Donald Mustard. According to Variety . Hey, all pooled together $7 million in the latest round of funding, which will help create a 'more customizable app and mobile experiences for players.' Beyond creating their own dream teams in basketball, football, baseball, and beyond, the app features sophisticated scoring via AI tools that enable users to compete against others for cash prizes. The money also offers Berry a sign of relief, as it helps the company complete the purchase of its rival platform, Guillotine League. Berry is glad that others in the sports world see potential in Fantasy Life and are on board to see it flourish. 'My entire adult life has been about helping fantasy players and sports gamers win, have more fun, and make this industry better,' said Berry in a statement to Variety . 'Fantasy Life is the culmination of my decades of experience — a destination for every kind of player, from beginner to sharp. With smart, personalized tools, entertaining content, and the best damn fantasy game ever in Guillotine Leagues, we're building a platform as obsessed with fantasy as we are. I'm incredibly honored that so many people I've long admired believe in what we're doing and want to be part of the journey. I can't wait for everyone to check out the new features and win more titles.' Other investors who signal that Berry has a hit on his hands include YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley and billionaire Jacksonville Jaguars owner Tony Khan. Investors who hopped on even earlier include NFL players like Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, and Ja'Marr Chase. SEE ALSO LeBron James, John Legend & More Invest $7 Million Into Fantasy Life Sports & Gaming Platform was originally published on
New York Post
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Matthew Berry goes behind the scenes on post-ESPN life, $7 million business deal with LeBron James and Maverick Carter
NBC Sports' Matthew Berry dove into the shark tank and reeled in some big fish. The popular fantasy football aficionado told The Post that how swayed some serious investors to give him the big bucks – $7 million of them to be exact – for his fantasy football platform 'Fantasy Life.' The startup platform, which he founded with the help of CEO Eliot Crist, has attracted a slew of star-studded investors, including LeBron James and his business partner Maverick Carter. 3 Matthew Berry pictured with Maverick Carter. Berry said that the investor list now includes Marlins co-owner Roger Ehrenberg, Devils co-owner David Blitzer, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Jaguars owner Tony Khan, as well as current and former NFL stars George Kittle. Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Ja'Marr Chase, Austin Ekeler, Brent Celek, and Larry Fitzgerald Jr., among others. The money was in part used to purchase the Guillotine Leagues, and he says the money is mostly already spent. 'It's a little bit similar to if you ever watched 'Shark Tank,' except I'm not walking into a room and saying I'm seeking X percentage of my, but it's a little bit similar,' Berry told The Post, adding that many of his investors are buying in for a second time for bigger money. 'In some of the cases, I had a relationship with a lot of these guys. We already have a relationship with Jason Stein, Roger Ehrenberg, and Tony Khan. All of those guys were already on our cap table.' Berry is no longer just the fantasy football analyst who was seen on ESPN airwaves from 2007 to 2022. He's been chasing his (pun-intended) fantasy life since that date, and it's a way different day-to-day than it was when he rose in popularity in the mid-2010s. 3 Matthew Berry continues to grow after leaving ESPN. Getty Images '[My life] is pretty different,' Berry said. 'Some of the aspects of my job are the same. I write a weekly column called 'Love Hate,' which appears on and I do a daily show. I do a Sunday morning show.' Still, those days in Bristol, Conn., were different, as he explained he was mostly pigeonhole-holed to strictly fantasy sports content and spent less time on the actual day-to-day analyst-style work he enjoys now. 'At ESPN, I was very much the fantasy football guy. When the regular NFL season was over, I was done,' Berry said. 'At NBC Sports, I am part of our NFL coverage. So while my beat is fantasy sports and sports betting, that's my primary role. I have been on the Kentucky Derby, and I've contributed to other projects that we have. I'm excited that we have the NBA, and maybe I'll be a part of our NBA coverage… It's been wonderful to be at NBC.' Berry is also seen working in tandem with Mike Florio, Chris Simms, Jason Garrett and more on NBC's Emmy-nominated 'Football Night in America,' airing Sunday nights. 3 LeBron James gives Matthew Berry a big time check for his startup company. Getty Images for Fanatics 'At NBC, I have the freedom to work at Fantasy Life. So when I'm not doing my NBC duties, I'm acting as a founder,' Berry said. 'Certainly, I miss my friends at ESPN, but no, [I don't miss ESPN.] That was part of the reason I left ESPN: to become an entrepreneur… That was one of the reasons I left ESPN. My contract was up, ESPN wanted me to come back, but they said to me, 'Hey, you can't have Fantasy Life. You can't co-own Fantasy Life,' the way I did in my previous contract, where I had a carve-out for it. I didn't want to do that, so it was kind of a no-brainer.'
Business Insider
07-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
An NBC Sports analyst just raised $7M for his fantasy sports startup. Read the pitch deck that helped him do it.
Fantasy football season is the best season. You get together with your friends, create a league, draft your favorite players, and face off every week throughout the NFL calendar to hopefully end up the winner and earn bragging rights until the season starts again. Those are the basics of a fantasy league. But what if you don't know much about the NFL, and are looking for some assistance in picking out the best players for your roster for the games on Sunday? Or perhaps you know a lot about fantasy football and want to find content to interact with or similar people to talk with. Maybe you want to get into fantasy sports betting. Fantasy Life, a brand started by NBC football analyst Matthew Berry, wants to offer something for every level of fantasy football fan — and it just secured a $7 million raise led by LRMR Ventures. Fantasy sports is "the great equalizer," Berry told Business Insider. "It brings people together. From the kid in the mail room to the CEO, to rockstars, to kids, to grandmothers. Almost every one of our investors plays fantasy football." Berry wrote Fantasy Life, a book that became a New York Times bestseller. It's about all the ins and outs of fantasy football, along with the social aspect of it, from punishments for coming in last to trash-talking with your friends. He quickly turned it into a newsletter. Austin Rief, the cofounder of Morning Brew, is a friend and advisor to Fantasy Life, and he told Berry that he had something big in the fantasy sports space. "You're doing about 6 billion things wrong, and yet, even with one hand tied behind your back, you're still doing better numbers than we did in year three of Morning Brew," Berry recalled Rief telling him. (Morning Brew shares a parent company with BI.) "That's when we pivoted," Berry said. After that, the newsletter became a website, and Berry hired Eliot Crist as CEO. The Fantasy Life team has since grown from a newsletter to a full media company, with a website full of written content and radio and video shows about fantasy football. In addition to fantasy football analysis, Fantasy Life offers betting analysis for all major sports leagues, videos on fantasy football, and ways to play through Guillotine Leagues, a unique fantasy football experience. "We think we're in a really strong position to do something that's that's never been done before in the space," Crist said. Part of Fantasy Life's growth included acquiring Guillotine Leagues, a new way to play fantasy sports with friends. Traditional leagues have games that are played every week, and if you lose one week, you just drop in the standings. You rotate through players, adding, dropping, and trading depending on what your team needs. Guillotine Leagues offers a different take. With its gameplay, if you lose, you are out, and all the players on your roster are released back into the pool to be picked up by everyone else who remains. Berry said there were some key elements that made him want to buy Guillotine Leagues. One was the playtime, with users spending an average of 22 minutes on the platform per session, per the company. "We think that Guillotine Leagues is the next big thing in fantasy football, and our goal is to have as many people try it as possible, because we think that once you do, you're going to be like, 'this is the only way I want to play fantasy,'" Berry said. The deck opens with a slide about what Fantasy Life is. This deck was pitched to investors in April of 2025. The description of Fantasy Life is "a fantasy sports, sports betting, and gaming company led by the biggest name in sports gaming." Matthew Berry is a key figure in the fantasy sports space. Berry has been working in the fantasy sports space for years, at various places like ESPN and NBC Sports. He is currently a cast member for NBC's Football Night in America. Guillotine Leagues is a gaming platform that Fantasy Life thinks will change the way users play. The slide says the unique play style that Guillotine Leagues offers has paid off, with 22 minutes spent on the platform in an average session. Fantasy Life has lots of plans for the rest of this year, including expanding 'paid-to-play' games (where users buy in with real money) The startup also plans a full redesign for web, iOS, and Android, and a Fantasy Life+ integration with tools and extra content for players. Fantasy Life has a goal in mind — to be the best fantasy product on the internet. Mike's Hard Lemonade has partnered with Fantasy Life on FantasyHQ, a place for personalized team advice, to help optimize lineups and real-time score updates. The company has also worked with other fantasy football platforms to integrate its content. Fantasy Life licenses content to LG, Roku and Fubo, SiriusXM, iHeart Radio, and a360 media. Through those partners, Fantasy Life says it has reached over 112.8 million households combined. The company raised $2 million in a friends and family round in 2023. Some of the investors in that round include Casey Wasserman, Tony Khan, Josh Allen, and Austin Ekeler. Fantasy Life has grown its company from 11 to 23 full-time employees. The deck says the company was recognized as one of the "best places to work in sports" by both Front Office Sports and Sports Business Journal in 2024. Fantasy Life plans to use the funds from the seed raise for a few different things. These include paying costs related to the Guillotine Leagues acquisition, developing its own technology, using paid marketing, and developing a premium product. The deck ends with a 'thank you' slide.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shira Haas Signs With Gersh
EXCLUSIVE: Emmy-nominated Shira Haas has signed with Gersh for representation in all areas. Haas can most recently be seen as the female lead in Marvel's Captain America: Brave New World. She stars as Ruth Bat-Seraph, a former Black Widow spy turned high-ranking U.S. official. More from Deadline 'Captain America: Brave New World' Sets Disney+ Premiere Date Gersh Signs Children's Media Company Totoy Matthew Shear, Actor-Filmmaker Behind SXSW Prize-Winner 'Fantasy Life,' Signs With Gersh Haas' international breakthrough came with her leading role as Esther Shapiro in Netflix's 2020 miniseries Unorthodox, for which she received Emmy, Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations, and won the Independent Spirit award for Best Female Performance in a Scripted Series. Her character, known as Esty, is a young woman who leaves her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn to seek freedom in Berlin. She also starred as the lead in the indie film Asia, for which she won the award for Best International Actress at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. Her other notable credits include Bodies, Shtisel, The Zookeeper's Wife, Broken Mirrors and A Tale of Love and Darkness. Along with Gersh, Haas is represented by TFC Management, Zohar Ya'kobson Representation in Israel, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films
Digital Trends
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is a solid first RPG for Nintendo Switch 2
Sometimes you need to put a game down in order to appreciate it. That's exactly what happened to me while playing Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. For its first six hours of the RPG, I was thoroughly unimpressed. I enjoyed its town-building and farming systems enough, but a dull story left me feeling like the niche series simply wasn't for me. I put it down and switched to the next game on my queue, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. It was far more similar to Rune Factory than I expected, using the same action RPG meets life sim hook. I sank a good seven hours into it before a surprising thought crossed my mind: I missed Rune Factory. Recommended Videos That anecdote speaks to the ultimate power of Guardians of Azuma. What starts as another run-of-the-mill farming game soon blossoms into an obsession thanks as its sticky hooks reveal themselves one at a time. Even with a bland story and thin combat, there's an engrossing adventure here that will give Nintendo Switch 2 owners their first meaty RPG to sink their teeth into. Learning to love Rune Factory Like previous entries in the long-running Rune Factory series, Guardians of Azuma is an RPG that's just as much about slashing enemies as it is tending crops. This entry follows a (surprise) amnesiac hero looking to heal a world thrown into chaos by an event known as the Celestial Collapse. There's a whole lot of story here, and that's consistently the weakest part of the package. While there's some thrill in battling dragons and uncovering the Gods of the world, flat writing and long bouts of dialogue can feel like more of a chore than, well, the actual chores. While that turned me away initially, the fact that I came back is a testament to what Guardians of Azuma does so well. More central than the high stakes story is the farming and town-building hook surrounding it. This time, my hero needs to take care of four different villages in towns named after the seasons. Each one has polluted plots of land that I can clear out and start building on. I start small in Spring Village, making a 3×3 patch of vegetables that I water, harvest, and sell in a shed. Then, I begin to expand. First I create a blacksmith's shop so I can upgrade my weapons. Then, I'm adding extra business like flower carts to give my town character. Soon enough, I'm obsessing over every detail down to the placement of small decorations. There's not too much thought behind my decision making at first. I'm simply crafting whatever items I can and placing them in spots that seem nice with a grid-based decoration system (it's much easier to use a classic overhead view to decorate than trying to place objects in third-person). The deeper I get, the more I start to pick up on the nuances. Certain shops will raise my stats, while others will give a boost to stats like trading. I begin to make more deliberate decisions, just as I start amassing villagers and assigning them to tasks. Soon enough, I'm making thousands in passive income each day. It's around this point that I bounced off of it and moved on to Fantasy Life. At first, it was a relief. It's a much more streamlined life sim despite having a lot of the same hooks. I spent hours picking up eggs and chopping down trees, happy that I didn't have to keep a spreadsheet to keep track of it all. But as my chores began to feel tedious, my mind started wandering back to Rune Factory. I began to miss my fully automated villages and the dozens of stats powering them. I yearned for all those complicated RPG hooks that gave me a constant sense of progression. Before I knew it, I picked my Switch back up and went back to that digital life. What I found calling to me was the incredible sense of automation that's possible in Guardians of Azuma. In the countless games I've played like it, my constant input is needed to keep the world running. I need to water the flowers, to harvest the crops, and to bargain with merchants. Here, I feel more like the mayor of four towns that can run themselves so long as I'm willing to invest in the right infrastructure. If I build houses, I can court more capable workers. If I construct businesses, they'll make money for the town. If I lay down soil, my farmers will take care of the rest. My job becomes more that of a financier who is setting these towns' economy in motion. There is a sense that the world moves even when I'm not there, and that's a very rare feeling for a video game to truly nail. Of course, there's plenty of work for me to do even when I'm not creating functional towns. The action side of the story has me flying to floating islands and slashing my way through dungeons full of orcs and tanuki. The combat is fairly repetitive, mostly requiring me to mash one button to attack and time dodges to activate slow motion counters, but I even come around to that with time. There's a lot of character building to be done through dense skill trees, equipment to upgrade, and spells to learn that are tied to tools like drums and umbrellas that are unlocked through the story. Most of my fights still tend to go one way as I slash enemies with my dual blades and poke their weak spots with a bow, but I have a lot of control over my build as well as six slots for party members. But frankly, I'm in no rush to see the story through to the end. After trying to blaze through it initially, I've found it more enjoyable to slow my roll and make my villages better piece by piece. I love hunting for frog statues out in the world that unlock more food and decoration recipes. I'm trying to tame as many beasts as I can and turn them into farm animals that hang out in my towns and produce goods. I'm still deciding which of my companions to marry as I go through each one's surprisingly lengthy side-stories that are often more engaging than the primary quest. And above all else, I simply love waking up on a new day and seeing a giant list of yields pop up in the corner of my screen, showing me just how much work my villagers did while I was out adventuring. Guardians of Azuma requires a lot of patience from players and that's something that may keep the Rune Factory series firmly in its niche despite a more vibrant art style that makes it look as grand as a Fire Emblem game. Give it enough time for the wheels to start spinning, though, and you'll find that it's hard to get it off your mind. Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma launches on June 5 for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
