Alumni Spotlight: Bryan Beasley
02/01/2023
Sports fans rely on the stats, data and history that broadcasters share, but the announcers don’t pull that information off the tops of their heads. They rely on people like Bryan Beasley (CSB ’11).
Beasley is a senior researcher on SportsCenter, which won the 2020-21 Sports Emmy for Outstanding Studio Show Daily. He also works on NFL studio shows.
Beasley collaborates with producers, graphics producers, the features group and on-air talent. He uses broad and deep sports knowledge to ensure the accuracy of live news and information for studio, event and digital coverage. His responsibilities include researching original content for full-screen graphics, anchor lead-ins and original pieces.
“It’s great to work with longtime talent like Chris Berman, who I grew up watching on NFL Countdown and NFL PrimeTime,” he said.
Though Beasley always wanted to work in the competitive sports industry, he admits he hadn’t always wanted to be a researcher. At Saint Louis University, Beasley studied business administration with a concentration in economics and envisioned becoming an athletic director at a college or a sports agent in one of the major leagues. His analytical mindset and knack for numbers led him down a different path.
He used microeconomics and statistics to analyze sports business. He studied profit maximization, revenue sharing, competitive balance and collective bargaining — skills that would serve him later in his career.
“I was interested in Saint Louis University because of the opportunities at the business school,” he said.
Those opportunities included hands-on experiences. As a member of SLU’s Delta Sigma Chapter of Alpha Kappa Psi, a professional business fraternity, Beasley networked with prominent local business people. And he assisted a sports economics professor with research on a consulting project for the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas.
He also played tennis for the Billikens, competing in Atlantic 10 conference tournaments and “scrappy” matchups against rivals such as Xavier University.
“Playing tennis has given me an incredible outlook on life and great lessons about failure, persistence, versatility, flexibility and never thinking you’re above other people,” he said.
After SLU, Beasley pursued graduate work at the University of San Francisco, another Jesuit institution. While there, he was a public relations intern for the Oakland Raiders during the 2011 season. He weathered the NFL’s highs and lows, including a lockout and the death of the team’s longtime owner and general manager Al Davis.
“My interest in the NFL wasn’t as big until I started the internship,” he said.
After earning a master’s degree in sports management at USF, he started working as a data analyst for Nielsen Sports, formerly Repucom. That position led him to ESPN in 2014.
In addition to his SportsCenter duties, Beasley leads tennis coverage at ESPN. He’s attended two Wimbledon Championships in London and the U.S. Open every year since 2015. He also helped cover the NFL Draft in Las Vegas, the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 in 2016, Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, and talk show First Take during the 2017 NBA All-Star Weekend in New Orleans.
“The choice to attend SLU was the best decision I ever made,” he said. “It was the foundation of my success.”
About Universitas
Universitas, the award-winning alumni magazine of Saint Louis University, is distributed to SLU alumni, parents and benefactors around the world. The magazine includes campus news, feature stories, alumni profiles and class notes, and has a circulation of 132,265.