SportingNews.com sent out an e-mail to its users Friday evening to announce that the site will no longer offer fantasy games.

Per the message, which was signed by president/publisher Jeff Price:

“Due to a shift in our core business strategy, SportingNews.com will no longer offer new fantasy games going forward (excluding Strat-O-Matic). The fantasy industry is changing, and we feel it’s best to devote our resources to providing the best fantasy content and advice on the internet, and beyond. We believe SportingNews.com’s fantasy content, tools and advice are already best in class, and over the next few months, we will completely redesign the Fantasy Source section of our site to deliver a new and improved user experience. With this shift in strategy, we will dedicate our entire fantasy staff to building Fantasy Source into the number one destination for fantasy information, accessible via internet, mobile devices, and other new technologies.”

This shift in strategy, of course, comes less than a year after Sporting News announced a multi-sport deal with RotoHog to run its fantasy games. That relationship opened with the 2009 fantasy football season, in which the primary Draft and Trade game struggled mightily.

This decision to change direction in advance of even the first baseball season after the announced deal makes it seem as though any issues in the SN-RotoHog relationship and/or the games platform could not be worked out.

For it’s part, SN.com has partnered with CBS Sports to offer half-priced baseball commissioner leagues on CBS’ site to SN.com users who have been awaiting 2010 launch.

Sporting News has long been a particularly trustworthy source of content both in print and online, and it’s innovation with the e-mailed Sporting News Today newsletter showed that the company is constantly looking for ways to adapt to a changing media climate. We’ll see what impact the absence of fantasy games (and their stream of revenue) will have.

FSB.com will pass along any more pieces of this story as we’re made aware.