Mike Wright details how ‘The Fantasy Footballers’ got started on AA Podcast

The trio of Mike Wright, Andy Holloway, and Jason Moore have successfully built The Fantasy Footballers podcast from the ground up, continuously ranking above much larger outlets in downloads and monthly listeners in the fantasy football landscape. But according to Mike Wright, their success was not always guaranteed.

In a recent appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast with Brandon Contes, Wright detailed how the podcast got started, which was three people working at a video game development company who had a passion for fantasy football that was perhaps even bigger than their passion for their actual job at the time.

“The three of us all worked together in a tech business,” said Wright. “Jason (Moore) was my boss and Andy (Holloway) would have been essentially my manager. He didn’t have that title but he was much higher up than I was. I got brought into the company because they were doing video games. I got brought in to do music and sound effects for the video games.

“They had been running in the league of record. And then I got a supplemental team put in there. They expanded from 10 to 12 teams. It was so important. It was the most important thing at work. Yeah, we’ve got a business to run. But people cared about fantasy football. There was some other people in the office that were also in the league. So it was the chatter for the majority of free time.”

In an attempt to make the league even more important than it already seemed to be to people in the office, Wright detailed that the podcast was ultimately formed originally as something to garner interest during their lunch break.

“Andy and I decided that once a week during lunch, we’re gonna record a podcast that is just about our league. We’re gonna talk about the trades that happened. Did anybody make a stupid move? We used it really as a platform for entertainment for Andy and I. Because we had a run where the two of us had a run where the two of us met in the championship three years in a row. Which I won two out of the three. Just gonna put that out there. So it was us dunking, making fun of the league.”

From there, the two ultimately decided to do a podcast for the public once a week. But listeners didn’t initially pile in this edition of the show. Then, their company began to fail, which prompted Wright, Holloway, and Moore to focus on the podcast as a side hustle while working a full-time job as well after the 2014 Super Bowl.

“It would be us recording shows at 10-11 P.M. You know, really grinding it out because you’re trying to work a full-time job. Trying to take care of three children, pay a mortgage. But you also have this — it sounds like a crazy side dream. But what if it worked? What if you make a podcast about fantasy football, the thing you like talking about the most? And it worked and it turned into your job. Well, right place, right time. And the show eventually took off so everyone quit everything else you were doing and focused on the podcast full-time.”

Ultimately, Wright, Holloway, and Moore capitalized on what was once a niche industry that has quickly blown up into an entity of its own. And according to Wright, the NFL is largely to credit for this due to their heavy focus on making the offseason much more important and publicized over the years.

“The NFL has done such a great job. Their schedule is the Super Bowl. You think football is done? No, it’s not. Because we go right into scouting. You go right into the NFL Combine. You go right into NFL free agency. Then it’s the draft and then training camp and football starts all over again. So their calendar, they have done a very good job of staying relevant.”

Nowadays, you see nearly every major network dedicate one or several weekly shows to fantasy football content. So competition in the industry is as high as ever in that regard.

But with that being said, The Fantasy Footballers remains amongst the most listened-to fantasy football podcasts out there, which is a true testament to the core audience that seems to be coming back each and every year.

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