College football fans know Athlon Sports best for producing one of the top season-preview magazines available. The company announced a move Wednesday, though, that will position it well in the growing area of fantasy college football and keep customers more engaged throughout the season.

“We started talking about an acquisition last October,” said Nathan Karp, former director of U-Sports and now director of fantasy sports operations for Athlon. “Very quickly we realized that this relationship would be a classic win-win and negotiated terms fairly quickly.”

The move is meant to integrate the U-Sports commissioner product — which was established back in 1996 — into Athlon’s online content, adding to each outlet a component that it hadn’t previously offered.

Existing users of U-Sports will still find the familiar site at the old address, but Karp says it will soon operate under the url usports.athlonsports.com - a destination that is already active.

“The only change existing users will readily notice is an increased focus on analysis and advice,” Karp told FSB.com. “U-Sports’ strength is providing a superior fantasy commissioner service, and we purposefully never attempted to author content. Athlon Sports, on the other hand, has been covering college sports since 1967 and has always been the leader for college football analysis.”

The company also hopes that the fantasy contests will draw more consistent traffic throughout the year — or at least the specific seasons — rising to meet the spike that occurs with the open of football season.

Karp said that U-Sports will also be a key piece of Athlon’s expanded online fantasy presence, which will include the launch of a new website, AthlonFantasySports.com.

“This site will showcase Athlon’s fantasy offerings, which primarily consist of U-Sports, fantasy content at AthlonSports.com and Grogan’s Sports,” Karp said.

Although football sits at the forefront of the deal and carries a larger audience, U-Sports also brings a basketball commissioner product that Karp said will also have a presence.

“The primary focus is, of course, on college football, which has a strong potential to capture the second largest fantasy audience,” Karp said. “However, there is still an audience for college fantasy basketball and unlike football, you can argue that the college game has more popularity than the professional counterpart in basketball.”

Tags: athlon, fantasy college basketball, fantasy college football, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, nathan karp, u-sports

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