Wednesday, March 9

Get Yer Free Baseball Mag Online

Many outlets have fantasy baseball draft kits. Many companies put out fantasy baseball magazines. XML Team has the Sports Forecaster baseball magazine available for free as a downloadable PDF.

Sharks Infest Baseball Waters

Tony Holm and his Fantasy Sharks crew recently launched BaseballSharks.com, which just so happens to deal in fantasy baseball content.

RotoWire Does ‘Droid with Draft Kit

RotoWire recently rolled out a fantasy baseball draft kit app for the increasingly popular Android phone, which joins the existing iPhone version.

Synsport Likely Closing

Many might be unfamiliar with Synsport.com, but this week’s announcement that the site will likely shut down before the 2011 NFL season reminds us of the niches that remain in the fantasy industry and the dedication of those users. Creator John Marino also decries the effect of the big, free league providers.

Tuesday, March 8

WCOFF Pay Issues

Fantasy Players Association president Scott Atkins has a report on late WCOFF payments to 2010 winners, including this quote from co-owner Dustin Ashby: “We’re in the process of correcting a mistake that was made in the processing of player awards. The issue causing the delay has been corrected. We expect the distribution of awards to be completed soon.”

Tuesday, March 1

RotoExperts Acquires Content Company

RotoExperts announced Tuesday that it has acquired MC3 Sports Media, which owns and operates the Around the Horn Baseball and Xtra Point Football blogs.

Old Faces, New Places

Former Fanball boss Ryan Houston presents some updates on the movements of several former charges, including Geoff Stein’s announcement this week of a new position with MyFantasyLeague.com. Houston also mentions that Kay Adams, part of Sirius’ Fanball Fantasy Drive team, will be hosting her own Sunday night show.

Get Sirius with Baseball Drafts

We also learned from the aforementioned Ryan Houston post that Sirius XM will be on hand in Arizona this weekend to broadcast the LABR drafts. Steve Gardner of USA Today has the lineups for each league and some further details for anyone unfamiliar with the League of Alternate Baseball Realities. The drafts will be on the air Saturday and Sunday nights, 7 p.m. to midnight Eastern.

Monday, February 28

Picktainment and a Zuckerberg

Forbes.com blogger Michael Humphrey has more info about Picktainment — the Oscar-games engine — and the role that Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi played in its creation.

Play Fantasy to Fight Childhood Brain Cancer

Fantasy Sports 4 Kids recently partnered with the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation to raise money to help children afflicted with cancer.

RotoX Goes Gonos

RotoExperts recently added fantasy veteran David Gonos to the staff. Gonos was most recently aligned with OPEN Sports and was once a CBS colleague of RotoExperts managing director Scott Engel.

Thursday, February 24

Fanball Hosts Stick with Sirius

Sirius XM has held on to hosts Ray Flowers and Kyle Elfrink of the Fanball Fantasy Drive show, which is now called Sirius XM Fantasy Drive. Flowers, the creator of BaseballGuys.com, has also joined RotoWire as a contributing writer.

Strat-Oh-Matic

SI.com’s Joe Lemire recently offered an ode to Strat-O-Matic baseball for this year’s 50th anniversary.

But Fantasy Never Dies

From the recent Herald-News obituary of 86-year-old Emma Bianchi of Joliet, Ill.: “When Emma died Dec. 11 at the age of 86, the family lost a diehard fantasy football player. Eleven years ago, Laureen’s then-sixth grade son started a fantasy football team and asked Emma to join it. At first, Emma didn’t quite understand the logistics and selected her players based on ‘He’s got such a nice German name,’ or ‘He works so hard for his community.’”

Artificial Intelligence Vs. Real Whatever-You-Have

Steve Gardner of USA Today passes along and builds off another blogger’s pondering of whether the rise of the machines will take over fantasy sports.

Fantasy Oscar Goes to …

With the Academy Awards coming up this weekend, here’s a plug for the fantasy-style games of Picktainment, which changed its name from AwardsPicks.com with the addition of games for American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

Madden Maker Gets Some Help

You’ve probably already seen this, since it was reported by Sports Business Journal and passed along by Pro Football Talk. It’s worth noting that EA Sports will be getting a break on its rights fees for 2011 as a result of the labor strife, in exchange for a one-year extension to their deal through 2013. One has to wonder if a similar deal is available to any of the many others who pay annual rights fees.

How Does Your Client Score with Bloomberg?

This agent blogger ponders the impact that Bloomberg’s foray into baseball statistical analysis — to which 17 MLB teams now subscribe — may have on player contract negotiations.

Wednesday, February 23

Wainwright Ain’t Right

We don’t do player-news stuff in this space, but I thought it worth lamenting that we haven’t even reached the starting of spring-training games and already a fantasy ace seems on his way to Tommy John surgery. Consider Adam Wainwright the latest argument in favor of drafting as close to the season as possible.

Front Office 2011 Arrives

In conjunction with MLB.com, Bloomberg Sports has rolled out the second season of its Front Office product of fantasy baseball tools, which it promises will be easier for consumers to use.

Accuscore Partners with You Digital

You Digital Media has reached a deal with Accuscore that will allow the latter to create and present video representations of its data sets. (If you know just what that means without reading more, you’re smarter than I.)

Former CBS Fantasy VP Joins RotoExperts

David Hersh, who formerly served as vice president of fantasy sports for CBS Sportsline after coming over in the Commissioner.com acquisition, has joined RotoExperts as a senior adviser.

Friday, February 18

Eagles-Vikings Added Intrigue to FFPC

John Haskell described in a recent interview with DraftSharks.com’s Jared Smola the agony created by having to wait for the delayed Vikings-Eagles tilt to deliver him $100,000.

Fantazzle Weekend

A couple of interesting things going on over at Fantazzle.com this weekend: For starters, as fantasy NASCAR options dwindle, Fantazzle opens its racing season with Sunday’s Daytona 500. And for fantasy basketball fans — or anyone looking for a reason to be interested in the all-star game — there’s an NBA fantasy game that combines the Sunday showcase with elements of the skills competition.

Sitdown with the MVP

NFL.com’s Michael Fabiano sat down this week with fantasy football MVP Arian Foster. Spoiler alert: He didn’t pass along the hug that so many of us would like to give.

Tuesday, February 8

One Season Ends, Another Begins

Apparently all caught up in the excitement of the Jordy Nelson Era dawning, FX announced the day after Super Bowl Sunday that it will be picking up The League for a third season.

Yahoo! It’s Baseball Season

Yahoo! opened the doors on fantasy baseball Tuesday, with Andy Behrens focusing on some new features for dynasty leaguers.

Happy Strat-O-versary

Regardless of your feeling about Strat-O-Matic’s role in the creation of fantasy baseball, there’s no denying that it helped breed many a current stathead from young-geek seedling. This year marks the 50-year anniversary of the game’s creation, kicked off by a free event in New York City on Feb. 12.

Monday, February 7

Foster, Vick Lead Examiner Awards

A panel of eight folks who act as fantasy football writers for assorted local Examiner.com outlets combined to vote Arian Foster the 2010 fantasy MVP, Michael Vick the “Biggest Surprise” and Randy Moss the “Biggest Disappointment.” (Wild guess: Moss reacted with a shrug and a scowl.)

Wednesday, February 2

Fantasy Finances, Real Analysis

This job posting calls for a full-time senior financial analyst for a fantasy sports company. The best news: The salary apparently falls somewhere within the tight range of $0 to $120,000.

Homeboy Done Good

Ladd Biro gets the proper treatment from his local newspaper following his Fantasy Football Writer of the Year award from the Fantasy Sports Writers Association last week.

Not So Big Ben in Fantasy

In Monday’s edition of PFT Live, Mike Florio and Gregg Rosenthal discussed how fantasy football might keep many from viewing Ben Roethlisberger as an elite quarterback.

Lights, Camera, Fantasy!

The Wall Street Journal tells the story of a fantasy movie league that’s actually made up of Hollywood types.

Monday, January 31

Fantasy Fishing Prize Goes Back Up

The Fantasy Fishing game from FLW Outdoors gained immediate attention by handing out $1 million grand prizes in each of its first two seasons before dipping to a $50,000 top amount last year. The 2011 season opened recently and will close with a $100,000 lead prize.

Fantasize Your Life

Even if ice fishing ain’t necessarily your bag (baby), this guy has the right idea with creating a fantasy-type scoring system for other activities in your life. After all, that’s how all these fantasy sports got their start anyway.

ESPN Leagues Supported on Sprint Phones

Sprint ID devices earlier this month launched the ESPN Pack, which enables fantasy-team management on the go, among other things.

Just Call Him ‘Mr. Loaf’

To anyone familiar with his fantasy prowess, it should come as no surprise that Meat Loaf knocked off Jerry Cantrell to win the ESPN-publicized Alice In Chains & Friends Fantasy Football Charity League.

Neyer Says Goodbye to ESPN

As he points out, Rob Neyer was hired 15 years ago by Starwave to edit fantasy content for the initial iteration of ESPN.com. On Monday, he produced his final piece for ESPN.

Sunday, January 30

Idyllic Fantasy Football Results

Canadian Joe LaCova is hoping the horse that he once bought with fantasy football winnings can take home a prestigious harness-racing prize.

Fantasy by the Books

Check this out: Apparently the Martin Library in York, Pa., has been hosting season-preview fantasy baseball sessions for the past 20 years. This year’s edition will feature USA Today Sports Weekly editor Paul White and Baseball HQ founder Ron Shandler.

Tuesday, January 18

What’s the Upside on Fantasy Basketball?

Hoops outlet Dime magazine explores the world of “digital basketball,” including Big Lead Sports’ investment in a couple of content sites two years ago. A couple of key questions, though, are what kind of room there is for growth in the fantasy basketball space and at what rate we should expect it.

Thursday, January 13

Bloomberg Upping the Ante on Baseball Analytics

Bloomberg demonstrated at Major League Baseball’s winter meetings in December some enhancements to the baseball analytics tool it rolled out with a fantasy focus in 2010.

NPR Rings for Bell

I can’t believe I missed this back in December, but apparently Stephania Bell’s work with injury analysis for fantasy purposes has gotten to the point where even NPR took notice.

Wednesday, January 12

Collette Takes His Talents Elsewhere

In perhaps the first post-Fanball move, former (part-time) staffer Jason Collette announced via his Dock of the Rays blog Tuesday that he’ll be providing fantasy content for Baseball Prospectus and RotoWire.

Monday, January 10

It’s ‘Fantasy Football’ for the Chuck E. Cheese Crowd

Fantasy providers, now we have finally arrived. Elaut USA has introduced one of those “look at the obscene number of paper tickets you could win before you actually end up with 5″ games that your pre-teen kids choose over better machines at Chuck E. Cheese. Although it has absolutely nothing to do with fantasy sports, it carries the name “Fantasy Football Tickets.”

Fantasy is Real Life

I don’t really have any better way to intro this column than with its own first line: “It was certainly the first time I’ve ever heard the words ‘fantasy baseball’ used in a eulogy.”

Build a Pick ‘Em Site

Freelancers, here’s a Britain-based ad looking for low-budget design help on a new “weekly sports pick ‘em” site.

Looking for an Edge

Tableau Software carries this interview with CBSSports.com data analyst Al Melchior on what the “data visualizations” add to the experience for visitors to the fantasy sports area. (It should be noted that Tableau is the provider of these visualizations.)

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

The emergence and evolution of the blogosphere has brought plenty of positive developments, but one key drawback is the blurring of the line between actual reporting and blind speculation. Our report last week on Liberty and Fanball was sourced. This Monday post on MidwestSportsFans.com that bandies the term “bankruptcy” about smacks of irresponsible speculation by one guy. It’s up to each reader to choose what to believe, but it’s up to the outlet to give you reason to believe it.

Thursday, January 6

Talented Mr. Alum

Matthew Berry was recently profiled by the alumni magazine of his alma mater, Syracuse University.

Saturday, November 20

How Not to Become a Fantasy Writer

Any time I come across an article that purports to instruct one on how to become a fantasy sports writer, I’ll probably be interested. If it’s worthwhile, I might pass along a link here. If it’s the complete opposite, I might also feel compelled to share. HowToDoThings.com is apparently a high-traffic site, and perhaps most of its content is very helpful. “How To Become a Fantasy Sports Writer,” however, was obviously written by someone who has no idea how to. The first paragraph introduces an incorrect assumption (”there is no doubt fantasy sports writers are in high demand these days”), followed by an unnecessary step (”you should start as a real sports writer”). A few of the ensuing sentences are not useless, but I’ll let you decide which. I can’t argue this final line, though: “For a start, you may also try out some sites that are hiring fantasy sports writer to be paid $30 per article composed of 200 to 300 words.” If you find someone willing to pay you $30 for every four paragraphs you write, jump on it.

ESPN Fantasy Folks Get Madden Profiles

We missed this about a month ago, but apparently Matthew Berry, Nate Ravitz, Stephania Bell and Fantasy Focus producer Jay “PodVader” Soderberg are all available free-agent players in Madden ‘11. Berry is a linebacker, Ravitz a receiver, Bell a running back and Vader a blocking tight end.

You’re Welcome, Bar Owners. Sincerely, Fantasy Football

This writeup on the weekend football scene around Hermosa Beach, Calif., doesn’t present anything particularly out of the ordinary. It does, however, offer a worthwhile snapshot of the direct impact fantasy football can have on indirectly related businesses.

A Longtime Fantasy

This Dallas-area fantasy football league has been going strong for 25 years, with the screwy scoring system to prove it.

Wednesday, November 10

What’s in a Name for Former “Fantasy Sports Ventures”

Inc. Magazine wonders aloud about the impact of the name change on the company going from Fantasy Sports Ventures to Big Lead Sports. BlogsWithBalls.com points to the whole thing as a prime example of bloggers’ increasing impact and a lesson to those “bloggers” that it’s possible for them to steer more than just the direction of their content.

Plenty of Fantasy in September’s Top 10 Sports Sites

This list of the 10 most-visited U.S. sports websites in September includes three fantasy-games outlets. There’s no way for us to know the impact of fantasy on traffic to other sites, but four others on the list fall within the same domains as included fantasy sites. Beyond that, I know fantasy football sends me to NFL.com (an eighth listed site) for a large portion of every day.

Participants Rave About First Pitch Experience

MLB.com provides a video look at the recently completed First Pitch Arizona event, hosted by Ron Shandler’s BaseballHQ.com.

MLB Duo Takes a Crack at High-Stakes FF

Former Milwaukee Brewers teammates Ben Sheets and Geoff Jenkins have reportedly teamed up on a WCOFF platinum-league team this season.

Sunday, October 31

RotoWire Does Droid

RotoWire has released the first of what the company says “should be several” Android apps from it this year — the RotoWire Fantasy News Center. The app supplies news for football, baseball, hockey, college football, college basketball, golf, auto racing and soccer.

KFFL Rolls Out iPhone Presence

KFFL has released a free iPhone app that features the site’s articles, player news and access to its forums.

RotoWire Gets Huffy

Another RotoWire item: The company has begun supplying fantasy content for the Huffington Post - including this item reproduced from the RotoWire “Rotosynthesis” blog.

Pickemfirst Adds FFPC to the Mix

Pickemfirst has added the Fantasy Football Players Championship to the lineup of fantasy platforms it supports. The Web application — as noted on this site several times — allows users to instantly check the availability of athletes included they encounter in online text away from their league-management sites.

Monday, October 25

Fantasy Over MLB Playoffs

This columnist for The Trentonian points to fantasy football’s predominance as the reason for the ratings edge the Week 6 Titans-Jaguars NFL matchup on ESPN held over the simultaneous Yankees-Rangers ALCS game on TBS. That lopsided Titans victory, of course, ended with a fantasy-altering touchdown run for Chris Johnson that spurred the Monday Night Football crew to discuss the play’s effect on fantasy owners (led by Mike Tirico).

Droid Does Yahoo! Hoops and Pucks

Yahoo! has rolled out Android apps for managing fantasy hockey and fantasy basketball teams.

Saturday, October 23

‘The League’ Live

Thousands of fantasy fans — or just dudes who like dude humor — are into the second season of The League on FX. Here’s a look back on an interview TV.com did with four cast members and co-creator Jackie Marcus-Schaeffer.

Fantasy Players Turn Consultants

It’s from more than a month ago, but still interesting: Sports business reporter Sarah Talalay of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel tells us about a pair of fantasy players who have taken on fantasy football consulting duties for friends, as well as brothers who get personal help annually from CBS Sports’ Jamey Eisenberg.

Wednesday, October 20

Athletes and Apps in Jersey

16W Marketing, a firm based in Rutherford, N.J., has created a new company in partnership with several athletes-turned-broadcasters that it represents, including Phil Simms and Howie Long. Among the future possibilities, the company says, are “fantasy sports applications.” The focal point for this venture, at least at the outset, seems to be placing its talent in voice/video spots, including content for the Behind the Mic website operated by Sports Illustrated.

Small World of Fantasy and Politics

Before he became a state representative in New York — currently seeking election to his first full term — Scott Murphy was part of the team that founded Small World Sports, which he and his partners sold to Vulcan Ventures/The Sporting News.

Fox Acquires Yardbarker

After two years of canoodling, Yardbarker announced Tuesday that it has been acquired by Fox Sports. In a message on the company’s blog, co-founder Pete Vlastelica said that the deal will “accelerate the growth of the Yardbarker brand” and increase the visibility for its more than 800 member blogs while not impacting the operation of those members. Fantasy outlets within the network include Razzball, Fantasy Daddy, Win My Fantasy League, The Fantasy Fix, The Hazean, Fantasy Football Maniaxs and Fantasy Knuckleheads. Another member site, Five Tool Tool, had this collection of top 10 impact points from the acquisition.

Tuesday, October 12

RotoWire Goes Mobile with B-ball Preview

As it did for baseball and football this year, RotoWire has put out a fantasy basketball draft kit app for iPhones.

Fanball Releases Basketball App

Fanball recently rolled out a fantasy basketball preview guide in iPad app form, followed shortly thereafter by one for hockey as well.

Wednesday, October 6

Cabbie Tops the Experts

Paul Farrell, a London cab driver trying his hand at fantasy baseball for the first time, topped the field in Bloomberg’s first everyman-vs-experts contest.

WCOFF Takes a New Vu

The folks at the World Championship of Fantasy Football have collaborated with Patriots Vikings receiver Randy Moss on the launch of VuFantasyFootball.com, an interactive video content site.

Saturday, September 25

Wiegert Treatment

In this report from St. Louis Business Journal, Charlie Wiegert says of his parting with Fanball, “They would have gotten rid of me a week before, but I was running a football draft in Buffalo.”

MJD: Fantasy Gets Clearer After Week 3

I probably missed his first couple of appearances as a fantasy football columnist for SI.com, but this week Maurice Jones-Drew said that the NFL picture will be much clearer for fantasy owners once we have three games behind us.

AP Story Labels Fantasy Sports Gambling

It’s out there, and the fact that it’s an Associated Press story means the story that calls daily fantasy sports “gambling” right in the headline has and will continue to be run by various outlets. We will have plenty to sort out within this story over the coming days.

Fantasy Football: The IT Thing

We’ve made our feelings known in the past on the annual “study” in which Challenger, Gray & Christmas tells us how far down fantasy sports are dragging the economy. As such, we tend to frown upon stories generated by the “study.” This short, IT-focused item, however, takes an interesting look at how companies shouldn’t worry too much about the supposed productivity loss and how the tech folks can actually help expedite our fantasy research.

Wednesday, September 22

FantasyPro.net Rolls Out Weekly Game

FantasyPro.net has launched a weekly fantasy football platform in which players build a salary-cap team and then enter a pay league at their chosen fee level.

TMR in Concert

Check this out: Matthew Berry has an Oct. 7 appearance scheduled for the Jewish Community Center in Springfield, Mass., for which attendees will be charged up to $35 (reserved seating; tickets also available at $25, $15 for Center members). By comparison, folks in Houston can buy a $30 ticket to go see Vampire Weekend (plus $12.99 in extra whatever charges).

Fantasy Goes to College

This article — apparently from the student paper for the University of Memphis, although it seems to instead be named for mayonnaise — focuses on the fantasy playing habits of some average college students, including at least one dude who will now have his professors checking his laptop more closely during class.

Duke Chooses MLBAM

Major League Baseball Advanced Media has won a Duke’s Choice Award for its fantasy draft application and live scoreboard. Although it would be much more interesting if these awards singled out personal favorites of John Wayne, Duke’s Choice awards “highlight the ingenuity and creativity of Java developers.”

Tuesday, September 21

Decisions Made Easier Via iPad

Bloomberg Sports has partnered with Roundarch to develop an iPad app ($4.99) for their Decision Maker fantasy football product.

New Site Fires Up the Numbers

New fantasy football service numberFire uses “quantitative analysis and statistical reasoning” to offer player recommendations, including comparisons to similar players, teams and situations from previous seasons. Guess it was just a matter of time before the nerds got their hands on fantasy football …

Fantasy Droid

Here are six free fantasy football apps for your Android. (C-3PO says, “Thank you, sir.”)

Just a Trophy Boy

The Northeast Times of Greater Philadelphia tells the story of how local boy Tom Harkins came to start FantasySportsTrophies.com, which now has a deal with NFL.com.

Monday, September 20

Fantrax Adds Writers

Fantrax.com appears to be building a writing staff to accompany the fantasy games and league hosting that serve as the site’s centerpiece. Fantrax recently added a general sports columnist, a golf columnist and a football columnist, who will also serve as the site’s editor-in-chief.

Fanatics Develops Yahoo! Tool

Yahoo!’s opening of its fantasy sports API allowed programmers to cater to the Web’s biggest fantasy audience, and FantasyFanatics.com did so. The Fanatics tool offers instant start-sit recommendations based on the crowdsourced rankings compiled for the given week from submissions via FantasyFanatics.com.

Sunday, September 19

Droid Does ESPN

ESPN has an android app out for fantasy team management, but those who want it will have to shell out $4.99.

Saturday, September 11

Illi-no

Allow us to present the all-Illini fantasy football team, via a Yahoo! draft event. Now let that be the last time anyone presents anything remotely similar.

WCOFS No. 1 Gets Mainstream Treatment

This week’s sign that fantasy is big time: John Rozek’s selection by World Championship of Fantasy Sports as the top fantasy football player in the world right now landed him a feature story in the Chicago Tribune. The story could provide inspiration to those of us with dreams of high-stakes winnings as well, as it reveals Rozek to not be an obsessive football nut (he doesn’t even get NFL Network) — merely a bright, experienced player who knows the fantasy game.

Fantazzle Gives the Ball to Ray Rice

Fantazzle Fantasy Sports has rolled out a free-to-play weekly fantasy football game with Ravens running back Ray Rice as the cover boy. Each week presents a fresh prize pool, with top winners becoming eligible for extra-cash games at Week 8 and Week 16.

Thursday, September 9

A Whole New Stink

Stinkball.com is up and running for the 2010 NFL season with a redesigned site. For anyone unfamiliar, Stinkball — in addition to being an ideal name for the next Cartoon Network show — is a fantasy contest in which you score by filling your team with the worst performers.

Wednesday, September 8

HuddleHub Went Late Night

HuddleHub.com only just launched last week, but the company wound up on Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night show on NBC way back in March. It turns out that fortuitous placement at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival won it some worthwhile media exposure. The Fallon appearance came in a monologue joke: “There’s a new program called HuddleHub that manages all of your fantasy sports teams. They call it the perfect solution for someone who’s too lazy to keep track of being too lazy to play actual sports.”

Joe Namath: Fantasy Analyst

In the first installment of what will be a weekly series throughout the season, Joe Namath provided RapidDraft.com with his thoughts on a few players at each position (except kicker, but who cares about them anyway).

Saturday, September 4

Fantrax Takes to Tracks

Back in late August, Fantrax chose to sponsor NASCAR Canada driver Kerry Micks to help introduce their service to Canadian fantasy players.

This Isn’t Just a Test

WeMade Entertainment’s Fantasy Football Manager is in open beta for the 2010-2011 English Premier League season. (That’s soccer, for our mouth-breathing contingent.)

Bloomberg Can Make FF Decisions For You

Bloomberg Sports has rolled out its Decision Maker product for fantasy football folks, promising to use algorithms to compare any two players for start/sit lineup decisions. The product is $8 for the season but will be available for free to players using NFL.com.

Fantasy College Football on the Rise

Tom Lorenzo of Fanhouse discusses the move of college football closer to the fantasy mainstream, with insight from CBS’ Brian Jones. (Of course, if you’ve been with us here at FSB.com long enough, you’ve been following the ascension for a while.)

Friday, September 3

Droid Does Yahoo!

The Yahoo! fantasy football app for Android has arrived and is available for free.

Cooley a Fantasy Homer, As He Should be

Washington tight end Chris Cooley, an experienced fantasy player, says teammate Clinton Portis is “a steal” in Round 4, new quarterback Donovan McNabb is a “good pick” in Round 5 or 6 and Larry Johnson is his team’s “fantasy sleeper.” Good to see Cooley puts his biases aside when he plays fantasy. Then again, if you’re a teammate of Cooley’s, you have to love this type of homerism.

Papa John’s Targets Fantasy Pie

As part of diving fully into its commercial alignment with the NFL, Papa John’s appears to be going hard after the fantasy player. One new campaign from the pizza chain will be asking fantasy leaguers all season to tell what makes theirs the best, with the winning group heading to next year’s NFL Draft. There will also be a contest to get free pizza delivered next Thursday (opening night) by NFL great Cris Carter, as well as fantasy football-themed Facebook badges available via the Papa John’s fan page. This writeup mentions the Papa campaign, as well as efforts by Buffalo Wild Wings, Hooters, Ruby Tuesday’s and T.G.I.Friday’s to reach out to fantasy players.

Grumbling in Satellite

Starting Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sports Grumblings will be joining the Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio lineup. The show will air for three hours and, according to its creators, “be a high-energy mix of fantasy sports talk and humor that is sure to get people talking.”

Celek Fills Fantasy League

Philadelphia tight end Brent Celek obviously ran a bit short on time and motivation in filling out the fantasy football league he opened to fans. The final three openings were filled on Tuesday, going to the first response with the Eagles’ final exhibition opponent, the first to correctly answer where the franchise played its first game back in 1933 (Baker Bowl) and — to ensure Celek will get targeted plenty — the first with a photo of quarterback Kevin Kolb’s jersey. You may all now continue on with your NFL season preparations.

Thursday, September 2

Fantasy Pros 911 Has an App for That

The crew at FantasyPros911.com has announced a free iPhone app that allows users to connect with each other via Opinionaided.com or Facebook to ask and answer fantasy sports questions.

Wednesday, August 25

Fanball Partners with DISH Network

Fanball announced Tuesday a deal with DISH Network that will support Fanball games SnapDraft and Team Pick’Em on this DISH Network platform.

How Can Fantasy Football Find Me Love?

We here at FSB.com know what you’re thinking: “I’m spending all this time figuring out how to build the best fantasy squad for this season, but how do can these fantasy football lessons help my dating life?” Of course, AskMen.com has the answers.

Got Some Time? Get Some Apps

Chris Richards of Canada.com points out some of his favorite fantasy sports apps for the iPhone.

Sunday, August 22

Basketball as Vanilla Ice Would Like It: To the Extreme

The folks behind FantasyFootballXtreme.com have launched FantasyBasketballXtreme.com to treat a different sport. We’ll leave it to you to guess which one.

Saturday, August 21

Now That’s a Top-Pick Dilemma

If you think it’s tough to choose between running backs at the top of your fantasy football draft, imagine a league that combines all four “major” American sports and throws into the mix LeBron James, Albert Pujols and whoever the heck plays hockey these days.

U.S. Military Playing Free Fantasy Football

Current and former members of the U.S. Armed Services are eligible to play free fantasy football against their brethren via MWRfantasysports.com, a partnership with RapidDraft.

Johnson & Johnson

It’s a good time to be (or own) Chris Johnson, whether your sport is football or baseball.

Sprint Live with Football

Sprint users can download the free Sprint Football Live app for their smart phones, which includes fantasy team management capabilities.

HollyStock Measures the Celebs

HollyStock is the latest new game to apply a fantasy-type model to the world of celebrity gossip. Although the concept might first come across as stock market style, making or losing money based on the whims of other players, the system actually purports to track 200 celebrity news sites daily to tabulate each subject’s actual fantasy-celebrity value.

Wednesday, August 18

Tugwater Coming After You

What has Gary Busey been up to on the rare occasion he steps away from Twitter? He got a new name, a new law degree and is helping professional athletes collect on fees they haven’t been receiving from us fantasy owners … all in the name of selling Vitamin Water. Meet Norman Tugwater.

Whole New FF Site

The most recent Fantasy Sports Writers Association newsletter announced the plan for “launching a new website that focuses on fantasy football in a unique and innovative way.” In the words of FSWA president Mike Beacom, “This is not your typical fantasy football site but one that has potential to change the fantasy football landscape.” Interested writers with daily availability to produce content throughout the season can contact [email protected] (Josh).

FSWA to Choose Favorite Baseball Performers

Just as it has for the past couple of seasons in football, the FSWA will ask its membership this year to vote on the top fantasy performers in baseball. The ballot will be put together between now and the end of the season, with the winners to be announced during the World Series.

Tuesday, August 17

Tech Advances Change Fantasy

This Carroll Country Times article calls some attention to the changing landscape of fantasy football in relation to advancing technology. (Oh yeah, and they also interviewed a top-notch source … and me.)

Buffalo Wild Wings Reveals Blogger League Lineup

Sara Holladay, better known as the FF Librarian, will be back in the Buffalo Wild Wings Fantasy Football League, competing against the 11 other bloggers and/or fantasy folks revealed in this press release.

Pro Tour Expands Offerings

Pro Tour Fantasy Golf is rolling out two new offerings for the fall portion of the season: FedEx Cup and Fall Series contests. In addition, the company has introduced a private-league platform that caters to country clubs and their members.

This is Fun …

One female uses the Yahoo! Answers portal to ask, “Why is my boyfriend obsessed with fantasy sports?” Um, is that a rhetorical question?

Fantasy Alarm Gets a Fighting Chance

Fantasy sports news outlet FantasyAlarm.com announced it has acquired Fighting Chance Fantasy, a content outlet. The two will be merged into a single brand under the Fantasy Alarm banner.

Fantasy Sports Gaming?

This gaming writer opines that fantasy sports should be considered gaming. One question: Does it really matter? Do those of you who operate fantasy games consider it “gaming”?

Tuesday, August 10

Looking for Help

If you’re a freelance Web designer looking for a fantasy sports gig, this aspiring site owner is looking for someone to build.

‘Take it to the House’

Procter & Gamble’s “Take it to the House” promotional campaign (a partnership with the NFL, will apparently include a “P&G Blogger Fantasy League,” comprising 12 “top sports bloggers.” If this group has been selected already, there doesn’t seem to be mention of the participants in the press release or on the campaign’s Facebook page.

Don’t I Know You?

Social-games developer Watercooler is now operating under the name Kabam. (I made sure to not include an exclamation point so as not to startle anyone.)

Pro Football Focus on Fantasy

In just a few years of being online, ProFootballFocus.com has become a well-respected resource for football stats and player grading. The site has now added a dedicated fantasy section, led by the staff from FantasyDC.com.

Wednesday, August 4

Top 10 Fantasy Football Players

The Fantasy Players Association forums have the most recent top 10 rankings of fantasy football players released by the WCOFF folks. Scott Atkins also says the FPA plans to conduct interviews with each guy.

Friday, July 30

Bramel Tells Why You Should Play IDP

Jene Bramel of Footballguys.com takes a turn in the NYTimes.com Fifth Down blog to tell fantasy football folks why they should be playing with individual defensive players and refutes the common arguments against doing so.

FF Champs Do Deal with WEEI

FFChamps.com has reached an agreement with Boston-based WEEI.com to offer the former’s fantasy football draft kit through the website for the popular sports talk station.

Picking the Pros vs. Joes

I recently took part in one of eight “Pros vs. Joes” drafts put on by the folks at the Fantasy Football Players Championship, which pits six fantasy players against six fantasy site representatives in each league. Those who didn’t participate can pick the winners for a shot at free 2011 FFPC entries. (Find my squad here — League 5 — and keep in mind that tight ends get 1.5 points per reception and it’s an optimal-scoring format, where you don’t have to set your lineup.)

RotoWire Kit on iPhone

Just like it did for baseball season, RotoWire is offering its fantasy football draft kit as an iPhone app. Among the features is a function that provides player recommendations when you check off the guys who have already been drafted by others.

Pick Your Name of the Month

The Hazean is keeping polls open through Saturday to determine your favorite fantasy football team name for July. I voted for “Stafford Infection” among the 10 options, though I find the leader quite clever in its use of all four Steelers quarterbacks.

Lowery: ‘Fantasy Football Best Thing to Happen’

We had former Chiefs and Jets kicker Nick Lowery on the RapidDraft.com Fantasy Lunch, our BlogTalkRadio show on Thursday. Although it was enough for us that Lowery — an obviously bright guy and now professional public speaker — was engaging and entertaining, the part that really made it worth a post here came deep into his interview. That was when the veteran of 18 NFL seasons said, “Fantasy football is the best thing that ever happened to football.”

Fantazzle Goes High Stakes

Fantazzle is offering customizable high-stakes fantasy football leagues as part of the SUPERDRAFT event in Las Vegas. Buy-in levels range from $1,000 to $10,000, with customizable league rules and sizes (anywhere from eight to 14 teams). Each level includes at least an 85 percent payout rate to winners.

Monday, July 26

Fantasy Football: The Musical

Sunday brought two readings in Pennsylvania of “Fantasy Football: The Musical,” the fictional story of Bill Simmons and Matthew Berry combining to invent the pastime. (Rumor has it that early editions of “Silly Little Game” followed the same storyline.)

MJD: Fantasy Analyst

Maurice Jones-Drew seems to be settling into his role as a fantasy analyst. He dished out some fantasy advice via Twitter on Monday, where his open discussion of the team from his recent Sirius XM mock draft got things rolling.

Why Are You Not on Twitter?

San Francisco Chronicle blogger (among other things) Tim Goodman says, regarding Twitter, “I can’t imagine sports fans not using it — especially if you’re into fantasy sports.”

Friday, July 23

Like Your Team, Track Your Team

Yahoo!’s acquisition of Citizen Sports has led new Facebook-connected social functionality (sponsored by Miller Lite) for its fantasy football teams this year. Anyone with a team on Yahoo! Sports will be able to “like” that team and get player updates and other content delivered straight to his or her Facebook news stream.

NFL.com Pushing New Fantasy Platform

The promotional plan for NFL.com’s new fantasy football league-management product has moved from Phase 1 — targeting existing league managers — to Phase 2, which will focus more on drawing in new players. NFL.com will also reportedly start a fantasy football show on the Web in September. (Why NFL Network doesn’t have a dedicated fantasy show yet for the predominant field of American players is a mystery to us.)

Thursday, July 22

MJD Chases Himself in Fantasy Draft

It can be interesting enough to see where Maurice Jones-Drew will go in Round 1 of the typical 2010 fantasy football draft, but Jones-Drew himself helped add interest to the Sirius XM Times Square draft on Wednesday. The Jaguars running back worked a trade with fellow host Jay Thomas to acquire himself, after Thomas drafted MJD third overall. Here are (most of) the rest of the results.

Wednesday, July 21

ESPN Gets Closer with its Magazine

ESPN the company will reportedly work more closely with ESPN The Magazine going forward, a move that includes moving much of the staff from New York City to Bristol.

Snoop Dogg in the Hizzy

The SUPERDRAFT Vegas fantasy football event has announced that it will include a performance by Snoop Dogg. No word on whether the Pop Warner football coach will also drop some knowledge (or knizz-owledge).

Yahoo! Does Droid

Apparently frustrated Android-owning fantasy football players will finally get their wish when Yahoo! introduces a team-management app for the line of smart phones in time for this season.

Playing the Sports Business Game

SportsBusinessSims.com, supports and markets platforms that allow students (think college) to try their hand at making business decisions for sports entities. This promotional video leads off with the proposal of making the XFL work (if “He Hate Me” couldn’t do it, I don’t know …) and the “flagship” product centered on the Oakland Athletics.

Do You Trust the Basketball “Experts”?

One always has to take message-board threads with at least a dash of salt, but this is an interesting discussion from the Rotoworld boards about player opinions of fantasy basketball “experts.” There are some fantasy analysts in various sports who take their words as gospel, so it’s good to get a dose from time to time of some thoughts within the target audience.

Tuesday, July 20

New Fantasy Source

SportingNews.com has rolled out a redesigned site for its Fantasy Source subscription area.

Sunday, July 18

Footballguys Rate Your Mock Team

Footballguys.com has partnered with FantasyFootballCalculator.com to attach its Rate My Team application to FF Calculator mock drafts.

Saturday, July 17

Catering to Your Brain, in Fantasy and Business

This blogger says that his fantasy baseball league with 12 tracking categories fundamentally presents too much for the human brain to effectively process at a time — then tells business folks that they could use the example to improve how they instruct their sales reps.

Are You Sure?

Time.com counts fantasy sports among the nine strangest things that one can insure.

Tools You Can Keep

KeeperCommish.com is rolling out a new service to help keeper-league football manage the extended strategy that their format entails.

Yahoo! Opens Other Sports

We assumed that opening the Yahoo! Sports fantasy API meant opening up every sport that the company treats. Apparently it didn’t, though, as this quick blog post relays that basketball and hockey are now available.

STATS Expands NCAA Presence

STATS has announced an extension of its major college football coverage for this season. Namely: The company will now offer play by play for all FBS games, X-info to reflect details that don’t appear in the typical box score and a mobile Web product, among other features.

Thursday, July 15

‘Draft of the Titans’

Anyone with an ESPN.com Insider subscription can read the upcoming ESPN the Magazine profile of the World Championship of Fantasy Football. (It’ll be in the July 26 issue.) Apparently competing in the WCOFF “takes a special kind of player.”

Sunday, July 11

Playing the Market, Head to Head

FantasyStockBroker.com isn’t the first outlet to apply a fantasy sports-type model to buying and selling stocks. It might, however, be the first to extend it to the point of creating 12-team leagues and pitting players against each other in head-to-head matchups.

Help Yourself and Help Our Troops

Those who purchase the Trade Deadline Primer e-book — a product of TwinsCentric.com, in collaboration with many other writers — will see part of their money go to help Operation Homefront.

What’s Your Handicap? Fantasy

Interesting question: Would you be interested in some sort of fantasy handicap system, something that allows competitors to start after the season has begun without having to take zeros for weeks past? It’s hard to imagine such a system being worthwhile. League play doesn’t kick off without an appropriate number of teams on hand, and anyone joining a league in season would be taking over an existing team. In tournament/contest-style play, there’s absolutely no way that the field would be cool with late entrants being given points they didn’t earn. (In other words: No.)

Saturday, July 10

Come, Hike, Draft

It’s not just sports bars and Vegas casinotels (I made that up) marketing to the heavy-spending fantasy consumer anymore. The Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau is selling the idea of hosting your draft at one of its resorts, going so far as to print up free “Pocono Mountains Destination Draft” T-shirts.

Friday, July 9

Football Outsiders Almanac is Out

We’re not here to pimp products at FSB.com, rather to inform. That said, if you fancy yourself a football fan and can’t appreciate the Football Outsiders Almanac — whose 2010 edition went live in PDF form Thursday — you’re either not as big a fan as you thought or too stodgy to consider new forms of analysis.

Thursday, July 8

Jim Brown Running Against EA Sports

Former NFL great Jim Brown is challenging a court ruling that said EA Sports is within its rights to use his likeness in video games. In dismissing Brown’s case back in December, a district court judge classified video games as “expressive works, akin to an expressive painting that depicts celebrity athletes of past and present in a realistic sporting environment.”

Rewards with Strings Attached

No fantasy relevance here, but the folks who pay to play fantasy are also the same types of consumers who will sign up for NFL team credit cards. Those who already have them will apparently have to use up any accrued awards points before the league switches providers in August to Barclays’ of England (a country with which the NFL just seems to keep getting cozier).

Wednesday, July 7

Del Rio Won’t Block MJD’s Path to Fantasy Show

Mac’s Football Blog passes along a report from Vito Stellino of the Florida Times-Union that Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio has given Maurice Jones-Drew his blessing for the planned Friday night fantasy football show on SIRIUS XM. This is news only because Del Rio told quarterback David Garrard to quit a Friday night sports talk radio show last season. Apparently, the difference is that “the preparation involved with playing running back is very different than that of a quarterback.” Hard not to wonder if Garrard sees it that way.

Picked to Click

The launch of The Hazean’s best fantasy football team name contest last week garnered a mention in the Hot Clicks blog at SI.com. The three monthly winners last summer were: Romo Sexual, Forgetting Brandon Marshall and Kendra’s Fun Basketts.

Tuesday, July 6

A plus K plus TFC

The Fantasy Consultant, Nathan Zegura, got a visit from Ashton Kutcher on Friday to talk some Bears on his first show for the SIRIUS XM fantasy sports channel. (Zegura and Kutcher do an in-season fantasy football show for the Web.)

Sunday, July 4

Want to Reach the Youngsters? Hit Up Their Celly

According to recent reports, two-thirds of kids in the 8-to-18 age range now own cell phones, perhaps representing a doubling in volume since 2005. The majority still don’t own smartphones, but that’s true of the population at-large. Whether or not that number rows at the same rate as the whole cell-phone market making the switch, it’s clear that you can reach that young, desirable audience on the go.

Saturday, July 3

Oracle, MLB.com So Happy Together

Here’s a bit about the relationship between Oracle and MLB.com the places software from the former into the latter’s fantasy baseball platform.

Friday, July 2

Taking Sports Socializing Visual

There’s this new site/application/platform called VisualSport that “lets lovers of sports visualize and share data.” I’ll be honest, it certainly looks potentially cool, but you probably have to be smarter than I am or at least have more time than I do to figure out exactly what it does.

Engel’s Angle on New SIRIUS Gig

Scott Engel of RotoExperts.com gives some details from the early days of his work on the new SIRIUS XM fantasy sports channel, including possible collusion in the Mets’ clubhouse to keep pitcher Mike Pelfrey from repeating as a fantasy-league champion.

A Woman’s Touch for SIRIUS XM Fantasy

It’s unclear whether prominent sports talk radio personality (and professional quarterback) Anita Marks will be a regular part of the SIRIUS XM fantasy lineup, but she at least played co-host for John Hansen’s Thursday show.

Thursday, July 1

What Can API Do For You?

In the wake of Yahoo! opening up its fantasy sports API, FanGraphs takes a crack at explaining a bit about what it is and what it allows you to do.

Just Like You Were There

Did you miss out on fantasy points when England’s clear goal was disallowed against Germany? Did you miss the game and the replay? Legos have your back.

Best in the Backfield

For accuracy in running back rankings, RotoWorld edged the field of participants who have been in the FF Librarian’s Accuracy Challenge for all three years it has existed. KFFL, however, has been dynamite over the past two seasons.

Wednesday, June 30

I Can Beat You with Two Picks Behind My Back

Have you ever played in a Yahoo! public league (or a free mock draft anywhere) and gotten annoyed by the person who screws the thing up with idiotic early picks? Well, FantasySharks.com is encouraging them. For the fifth straight year, the site is supporting a challenge in which participants join a “competitive” Yahoo! public league and draft a kicker and a team defense with their first two picks. The top prize (a sum of “sand dollars,” Fantasy Sharks’ fake currency) goes to anyone who can win their league.

Tuesday, June 29

FFPC Chooses RTSports

The Fantasy Players Association website passes along word that the Fantasy Football Players Championship has chosen RealTimeSports to host its leagues this year. The FPA also raises some concerns that the FFPC audience might have with the switch from previous host MyFantasyLeague.com.

Monday, June 28

EA Sports, It’s in the (NFL.com) Game

You’ve surely heard of the fancy new fantasy league-hosting product at NFL.com, but did you know that EA Sports will be providing the player projections for the full season and on a weekly basis?

All the Way to the College World Series

The RapidDraft.com Gremlins — an under-16 baseball team from Wisconsin playing in the Slumpbuster Tournament in Omaha this week that runs concurrently with the College World Series — won their first game today 7-3. Tonight: a trip to the World Series.

WSOP with Fantasy

Fantazzle has launched a free-to-play fantasy game for the upcoming 2010 World Series of Poker, with the top prize a seat in the 2011 event.

Fantasy Business Hub, That Madison

This lengthy story from the Wisconsin State Journal takes a look at three fantasy sports companies based in the Madison, Wis., area — RotoWire, MyFantasyLeague.com, and FanSoft Media — with an eye toward the still-recent emergence of fantasy sports. (Unfortunately, it’s also yet another example of incorrectly crediting Daniel Okrent with inventing fantasy sports — even with the “modern” qualifier attached.)

Sunday, June 27

Those Are Some Nice Tight Ends You Got There

The FF Librarian has continued to crunch her Accuracy Challenge numbers and found Ask the Commish to be the top three-year performer in projecting fantasy tight ends.

Saturday, June 26

Silliest Little Documentary

Yahoo! Sports blogger Kevin Kaduk (Big League Stew) identifies Silly Little Game as the weakest of the documentaries to date in ESPN’s “30 for 30″ series. We certainly weren’t fans either.

Starters Launch Crowdsourcing Sister Site

Ready Set Go Fantasy Sports, the parent company of FantasyFootballStarters.com, has rolled out FantasyFootballHelp.com. The new site follows the still young trend of crowdsourcing by allowing users to create blogs, find articles and share advice and content with others.

Who’s the Best Year over Year?

The Fantasy Football Librarian has started to calculate and release “expert” accuracy rankings combining the three years that she has been measuring. So far, RotoWorld leads the pack for ranking receivers before the season over the past three years. Ask the Commish edged RotoWorld at quarterback.

NoOffseason.com Debuts Dynasty Mag

Dynasty formats in fantasy football seem to be gaining in popularity as both the overall pool of fantasy players and segment of serious players grow. NoOffseason.com is reaching out to that audience with its just-released Dynasty Draft Guide, published as an online magazine.

Ju-lius, Julius Jones. C-rap, Crap.

If you like The Electric Company and fantasy football and have a spare minute, you might enjoy this quick video.

Thursday, June 24

Getting in on World Cup Fantasy Kicks

WeMade Entertainment has launched a salary-cap fantasy game called Fantasy Football Manager South Africa to run through the rest of the World Cup.

Maximizing League Play

Maximum Fantasy Sports is adding league hosting to its site offerings for the first time, including the ability to move players in and out of lineups after their games have started.

Go to a Game with a Great

Yesteryear is offering the opportunity to win tickets to attend an NFL game with Tony Dorsett or Dwight Clark.

Calling (Out) All Commenters

Andy Behrens and his fellow fantasy football “experts” at Yahoo! are challenging their readers in a four-division league this fall, even though the readers have no chance.

Wednesday, June 23

New Guru

FantasyGuru.com has rolled out a redesigned subscriber interface that it says is cleaner and easier for users to navigate.

Don’t Look Over Dwayne Bowe

Chiefs receiver Dwayne Bowe reportedly told the high school-aged attendees of a football camp this week to make sure to draft him in fantasy.

Tuesday, June 22

Back to the Fantasy Future

Motivated by his most recent viewing of Back to the Future II, ESPN’s Tristan Cockcroft has gone ahead and projected the fantasy baseball all-star team for 2014.

Soccer, Beyond the Lack of Scoring

A recent study written up in the journal for the Public Library of Science purports to have found a method for measuring play-by-play contributions and performance of soccer players, whose low-scoring sport can be tricky for fantasy players.

Pickemfirst Up First

Pickemfirst creator Alain de Raynal told FSB.com that his application was the first to be applied to Yahoo! fantasy games via the new open API there. This allows Pickemfirst users to add their Yahoo! teams to the app without having to share a password. Rumor has it that Yahoo! might also eventually set up a gallery of the best available apps, though we have yet to confirm any such plans with Yahoo!.

Bloomberg Baseball on Facebook

Bloomberg Sports has launched a simple fantasy baseball game application on Facebook, developed by RotoHog.

Monday, June 21

How Big a Fan Must You Be?

Are you a sports uber fan? In her writeups of the recent Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit, the OCD Chick mentioned Yahoo! Sports’ Kyle Laughlin classifying sports fans in the “casual,” “everyday” and “uber” categories. The qualifications for “uber” tend to match up with the most engaged and serious fantasy players. Yahoo!’s challenge/goal is to convert fans in the other two groups into engaged fantasy players.

Still Dreaming

Checking back in on Dreamstreet Golf, the startup fantasy game site that we mentioned on here about a month ago, it looks like the contest still has yet to launch. The just-completed U.S. Open had been the targeted first tournament, but anyone who has tried to put on an online game probably knows just how easy it can be to miss even the most realistic targets.

Bloomberg Saw Growth Potential in Fantasy

In this transcript from an interview on Moneyweb podcast, Bloomberg Sports head Bill Squadron speaks of the growth potential Bloomberg saw in the fantasy sports field and the role that played in developing its new sports-themed products. Squadron also says that the company plans to expand beyond baseball but has yet to nail down which sport will come next. That would seem to indicate no offerings for the upcoming NFL season, which will open in less than three months.

What’s a ‘Fan’ Worth?

According to this eMarketer report, a consumer that is a Facebook fan of your brand is likely to spend twice as much as one who is not a fan. The real value of a Facebook fan, however, is tough to nail down and will vary by that person’s activity level.

Sunday, June 20

Hinske Likes to Play

Braves infielder Eric Hinske is not only a fantasy player, but apparently a fairly avid one. He informed Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan before Wednesday night’s game that the Falcons quarterback appeared on three of Hinske’s fantasy teams in 2009.

Saturday, June 19

Razzing on the Go

Just to prove that pretty much everyone has an iPhone app at this point, fantasy content site Razzball has launched theirs. (Oh, come on, it’s a joke. “Razz” is right there in the name.)

Friday, June 18

Fantasy Advice Fresh from the Oven

Meatloaf recently told listeners of RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today on Sirius XM radio that his secret to success in fantasy baseball is judging players by what they did after the All-Star break.

Americans Like Their Online Sports

Recent ratings from comScore Media Matrix reportedly showed a 20 percent jump in traffic to American sports websites in May over April. Of course, that makes sense when you consider the advancing of the NHL and NBA playoffs, the approach of the World Cup and the aftermath of the NFL draft (or Draftermath).

Fantasy Cricket, You Say?

Here’s an interview with Dream11 COO Yashraj Vakil, who previously discussed his company’s fantasy-cricket portal right on this site.

Make Money the Easy Way

It’s ridiculously simple, folks: Host a fantasy league in a sport you “love and enjoy,” and you will make money. (This sound advice brought to you by every one-on-one interview from a relationship-related reality show.)

Wednesday, June 16

RotoWire Partners with WCOFF

This has been out there a while (and, frankly, I thought I had linked to it already), but RotoWire and WCOFF have reached a “multi-year” agreement that will have RotoWire distributing WCOFF and WCOFB content and provide premium Mock Draft Central subscriptions for WCOFS participants.

In Japan, They Own Your Name

Scroll down this list of Japanese sports news briefs and you’ll see that courts in Japan have upheld teams’ ownership rights over the names and likenesses of their players.

Tuesday, June 15

FIFA on Facebook

This FIFA app for Facebook developed by EA Sports apparently includes functionality for fantasy soccer leagues.

Promo Doesn’t Go Over Well

At the risk of condoning the language (I don’t), I think the comments on this post announcing a partnership between FF Champs and Barstool Sports can at least serve as a reminder/warning to know your audience and be careful about how you speak to it.

He Loves His ‘Man Friends’

I think that, deep down, we guys can all find some truth in this inspirational song … not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Sunday, June 13

McDonald’s and Others Jump into World Cup Fantasy

Nando DiFino of The Wall Street Journal recently took a look at the allure of World Cup fantasy games for several companies, beginning with the official FIFA game sponsored by McDonald’s. Unfortunately, he also followed the false step of ESPN’s “Silly Little Game” in crediting Daniel Okrent with inventing fantasy sports. If the creator of Rotisserie scoring is bitter about the money being made off “his” game, just imagine how it feels to have been playing fantasy sports in the 1960s and then see various national media giving credit to a bunch of folks young enough to be your children.

Bloomberg Does Mobile Baseball

Bloomberg Sports recently launched an iPhone app to provide its analytical baseball product to mobile users.

World Cup Fantasy Across Social Cultures

Middle Eastern firm Quirkat is supporting a Facebook app that presents World Cup fantasy “football” in three languages: Arabic, English and French.

Rice Backs Fantazzle

Fantazzle has struck a deal via Curv Sports to add Ravens running back Ray Rice as a sponsor for some of its games.

Dirty Fantasy

Plenty of outlets have their fantasy offering for the World Cup, but the site launched by ad agency Host presents something different: A game that awards dirty play. Top scores will be achieved by “moments of utter filth, times of unforeseeable but creative cheating.”

Saturday, June 12

The World’s Fantasy Game

The Wall Street Journal recently presented a fairly extensive writeup on the fantasy implications of the just-started World Cup, as well as the pitfalls of fitting soccer into a successful fantasy format.

FanDraft Blends with MFL

MyFantasyLeague.com has partnered with FanDraft, allowing those who purchase the latter’s draft software to easily import results into MFL and save $20 off the MFL league-creation fee.

Wednesday, June 9

Yahoo! Talks API

Yahoo! gets into detail about its new fantasy sports API and YQL tables via its Developer Network Blog. I’d try to sum it up or pick out highlights here if I were a bit smarter.

Monday, June 7

Athlon Blurs Line Between College and Pro

Now this is interesting: Athlon Sports just launched this week a premium league-hosting option that allows users to combine college and NFL players in the same pool. FSB.com will have the scoop as soon as we get a chance to talk to the folks involved.

Friday, June 4

WDP: Fantasy Mags Should Pick It Up

KFFL’s William Del Pilar says he’s regularly disappointed with the analysis that fills fantasy football preview magazines.

Thursday, June 3

Malaysia, Hello

Excited about the upcoming World Cup but wondering what kind of coverage you’ll have available while you’re in Malaysia? Worry no more. Yahoo! Sports has rolled out a Malaysia-dedicated site.

That’s Our Boy

Scott White’s alma mater, the University of Georgia, recently featured the CBS Sports fantasy analyst for winning the 2010 FSWA baseball writer of the year award.

Fantasy Programmer Wanted

If you’re a programmer with experience building a fantasy football website but without the desire to make much money, these folks would like you to build a slight variation on the Yahoo! fantasy platform for $750 or less.

Fantasy Factor Buddies Up with WCOFF

FantasyFactor.com has partnered with the World Championship of Fantasy Football to attract players of the former to the latter. Starting Friday, those who play in the Fantasy Factor daily baseball games will get “WCOFF dollars” that can be put toward the buy-in for the main event.

Fantazzle Footy

Fantasy gaming site Fantazzle.com has rolled out a slick bracket-style game for the upcoming World Cup.

Tuesday, June 1

Fantasy WSOP

I have to say, I have never understood the draw to watching the World Series of Poker on ESPN. Now, playing fantasy WSOP — which is apparently becoming pretty big, particularly among the poker pros — that I can get behind.

Greco to Host Sirius Show

Paul Greco of Fantasy Pros 911 announced recently via his Facebook page that he’ll be co-hosting a show from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays on Sirius 125. The show is the third fantasy broadcast to join the satellite channel, which is still listed as “Sports Play-by-Play 1″ on Sirius’ website. RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today and The Football (Soccer) Show are the only programs currently in the lineup. Fanball recently announced a weekday time slot on the channel.

Here’s a Trade Offer — Psych!

About a third of the way down Bill Simmons’ ‘Memorial Day Mega-Mailbag,’ a reader proposes a new fantasy baseball tool that NEEDS to be developed: the April Fool’s trade offer. This long-overdue feature would allow you to send a fake trade offer to that dude who always claims to be trying to help you by taking that slugger off your hands after he went 0-for-3 once. When he tries to accept the offer, a message tells him he’s been had. If MyFantasyLeague.com did baseball, this would already exist.

Saturday, May 29

Fantasy Hockey Game Stays Live

InGamer Sports is running a fantasy hockey platform through the NHL finals that allows participants to adjust lineups while the games are going on.

Chance for Extra Fantasy Factor Winnings

FantasyFactor.com will be running a June promotion in which all entries into cash baseball games will be automatically entered into a contest for extra money at the end of the month. The top four June performers will split $1,000, with half going to the top scorer.

Friday, May 28

Fantasy Widget for Knuckleheads

The guys in charge of Fantasy Knuckleheads have put together a widget that pulls content from a number of fantasy sites. We don’t know exactly which sites are included, but it seems a fair assumption that the Knuckleheads would draw from their own list of recommended outlets.

Extending the Network

The “OCD Chick” is the latest addition to Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network.

Fantasy Football Help Needed

This London-based outfit is looking for a similarly British developer for a “fantasy football” site. We can only guess by the location that by “football” they mean “soccer.”

ESPN Launches Local Apps

ESPN.com’s regional sites have garnered plenty of play — particularly during ESPN broadcasts — and drawn many noteworthy writers from newspapers and websites in the areas they serve. The company has now rolled out locally focused iPhone apps to extend the targeted style of coverage.

Yahoo! World Cup Approaching

Yahoo! is rolling out a global sports campaign to accompany the World Cup, including a pick-em style game called World Soccer 2010.

FFChamps.com Reclaimed by Founders

After selling FFChamps.com in 2006, cousins Ian and Jon Millman recently teamed up with Andrew Miller to buy the content-and-services provider back.

No More of that Pesky Waiting

Picklive has announced a free public launch of its immediate, short-term fantasy model to run alongside the World Cup. For those who like the increasing prevalence of daily and weekly fantasy games but can’t stand that unbearable wait for the day to actually end will be able to play “7.5-minute” fantasy matchups during soccer matches and change their lineups as play goes on.

Thursday, May 27

X Says It’s Better Than Y!

The designer of the new FantasyMonster iPhone app says his product enhances the experience for Yahoo! fantasy players managing their teams on the move. Of course, this concept was tried once before, predating Yahoo!’s own iPhone app. The fact that it no longer appears to be live has to make you wonder about the viability of this newest entry, which costs $3.99 to download.

Waiting for Strasburg

Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino addresses the Stephen Strasburg hype and hope train in fantasy baseball, adding perspective to the Nationals prospect’s situation by looking back at some previous players whose reputations arrived before they did.

Postseason Judgment

Fantasy Postseason and Fantasy Judgment have reached an agreement whereby the latter will provide dispute-resolution services for the former’s games through the 2010 MLB playoffs.

App for the Other Football

More fantasy outlets are rolling out iPhone apps all the time. This one, Fantasy Football Manager, can help you manage your Premier League fantasy soccer teams.

Draft Sharks Relaunches

Recent FSB profile subject Draft Sharks has launched its redesigned website with content geared toward the 2010 fantasy season.

Friday, May 21

Footballguys App Starts Strong

Two days after its release, the Footballguys.com iPhone app ranks as the sixth most popular free app.

Fantasy Sports Bar Doing Well

According to SuperCommish.com, The Post Sports Bar & Grill fared quite well in its first year of operation with a particular lean toward fantasy players.

Irish Sports Go Fantasy

Most of us have to determine which hurlers to start for our fantasy baseball teams every week. Now you can do the same with your favorite Irish hurlers. Fantasy Gaelic Sports launched its beta phase recently with platforms for several sports.

Fantasy Questions? There’s an App for That

If you’ve got a dollar and some fantasy sports questions, you can buy the Fantasy Sports Coach iPhone App, which appears to treat baseball, football, basketball and hockey. The App seems to be trying to build a community of users to answer each other’s questions, though the first review on the page says early questions are being addressed by the programmers.

Hatty Goes Mobile

The 2010 Fantasy Football Draft Guide from HattyWaiverWireGuru.com is already available as an app for iPhone or iPad.

Fanball Joins Sirius Fantasy Lineup

The Fanball folks announced Friday that “Fanball’s Fantasy Drive” will occupy the 5-8 p.m. time slot on Sirius 125, the satellite radio channel that kicked off a fantasy schedule this spring with “RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today.” Kyle Elfrink, Ray Flowers and Charlie Wiegert will host, and Tom Kessenich announced that the first week will feature interviews with past NFFC winners.

Thursday, May 20

Yahoo! Football as Multichannel Lesson

Forrester Research is presenting a case study that centers on the Yahoo! fantasy football experience to look into the delivery of multichannel products to Web and mobile consumers.

Fantasy + Baseball Cards = 10-Year-Old’s Dream

The eTopps Big League Challenge will combine fantasy knowledge (starting the best players) with collecting baseball cards (or, at least, “eCards”) in a competition that opens May 24.

CFL Player Rankings, Eh?

There doesn’t seem to be much Canadian Football League fantasy play out there, but for those who are involved, FFToolbox.com has put together some rankings. Serious American football fans should recognize some names for former NFLers and/or major-college contributors.

Footballguys App Live

The Footballguys.com app for iPhone and iPod Touch is now live and available for free via iTunes.

Wednesday, May 19

Fantasy Sports Magazine Producing an NFFC Issue

The FPA blog passed along news from the NFFC message boards that Fantasy Sports Magazine is putting out an issue centered on the NFFC and geared toward its high-stakes players.

Tuesday, May 18

Hey, Smartie, Try Sim Leagues

USA Today fantasy writer Steve Gardner says that fantasy owners who think they’re smart should try simulation games that put them in complete control.

Fantasy Wakeboarding for Cash

A partnership with the MasterCraft Pro Wakeboard Tour will mean a $1,000 grand prize at the end of the season for the winner of the Fantasy Action Sports League game, which is free to enter.

OPEN Seeking Funding

OPEN Sports is going after a third round of venture-capital funding, according to Sports Business Journal, after two initial rounds that tallied $14 million in backing.

‘Fantasy Industry is Changing’

New Sporting News publisher Jeff Price spoke earlier this month about his decision to dump fantasy games and focus on content. The story also mentions, however, a plan to bring games back to SN, perhaps as early as this football season — likely something that incorporates social media.

Friday, May 7

SI, Watercooler Collaborate on Football Game

Sports Illustrated announced this week that it partnered with game developer Watercooler on a multi-platform fantasy football product. Team management and game connectivity will be available to users via SI.com, Facebook and SI Mobile.

Differences in Fantasy’s Big Three

Nando Di Fino of The Wall Street Journal this week used Yankees middle reliever Alfredo Aceves’ ownership numbers to illustrate differences between the user bases for fantasy games at Yahoo!, ESPN and CBS.

FF Librarian Expecting

As Mother’s Day approaches and threatens to get many of us guys in trouble, FF Librarian Sara Holladay announced on her blog Thursday night that she’s due to have her first child (a son) right around Week 3 of the coming NFL season. This guarantees that she’ll need multiple bye weeks, and a skeptic might wonder if she’s building in an excuse for failing to reprise her Super Bowl trip-winning fantasy play of 2009. Of course, we don’t think that way here at FSB.com, so we’ll just say congratulations and good luck.

Blurb Joins Footballguys

Andrew Garda, proprietor of ThunderingBlurb.com, contributor to Draftguys.com and Fantasy Sports Channel host, will join the Footballguys.com staff this season.

Wednesday, May 5

FSTA Deadline Approaches

May 10 signals the end of the early-bird sign-up period for next month’s FSTA conference in Chicago. After that, the registration fee jumps $150.

The Other A-Rod Could Own the Real One

Just in case you were wondering (and I know you were), Andy Roddick plays fantasy baseball — and apparently isn’t too pleased with the way his season is starting out.

Monday, May 3

RosterSlots Spinning Baseball

You might remember us writing about RosterSlots.com a couple of months ago. Even if you don’t, the site opened its inaugural baseball season late last week, which creator Peter Wikander has always planned to be the site’s centerpiece.

Fantazzle Baseball Goes Daily

After going twice weekly with its fantasy baseball offering last year, Fantazzle is offering daily and weekly contests in 2010. The site has also launched its FanStock platform, a system for awarding points to frequent users.

Sunday, May 2

Bringing Europe Together in Fantasy

A British soccer fan has launched a fantasy game site that allows users to build teams of players from various European professional soccer leagues.

EPL Schedules Not in Public Domain

A British High Court recently ruled that the schedules for English Premier League soccer teams are copyrighted material, and thus cannot be freely displayed in outlets such as newspapers and non-EPL websites. The ruling came as part of a suit brought by the EPL against, among others, a British subsidiary of Yahoo!. The court apparently said the work that goes into building the schedule justifies a copyright. Could this ruling embolden an American sporting body?

Chrome Users Can Pickemfirst

The Pickemfirst browser add-on tool for fantasy owners is now available for Google Chrome as well.

Sunday, April 25

How Does Real Scandal Affect Fantasy Sport?

The Melbourne Storm of Australia’s National Rugby League was found to have violated salary-cap rules and stripped of premiership status and forced to return tournament prize money. That doesn’t mean a whole lot to most of us in the States, but it could raise questions for fantasy players over the validity of results and whether those results would be changed. Fox Sports Australia, at least, is sticking with what happened on the fields. The situation could be of particular interest for anyone who runs fantasy games for single events such as the Olympics, tennis tournaments or the Tour de France, in which a disqualification after the fact could alter official results.

FF Site Designer Wanted

Freelancer.com has a listing seeking contractor bids from Web designers with experience in doing fantasy football sites.

Silly Little Review

When a fantasy baseball documentary gets put on by ESPN, it garners a full review in The New York Times. (We’ll have our word on it as soon as we can get to the official FSB.com viewing.)

SuperDraft Selects Kutcher

Sports Business Journal reports that Brand Interaction Group has reached a deal with Ashton Kutcher’s company Katalyst to grow its SuperDraft fantasy football event in Las Vegas.

Tuesday, April 20

India’s Next Big Thing

Harsh Jain of Dream11 has this writeup on the growing Internet market in India and the growth potential for fantasy sports in that market, particularly cricket.

Daily-Style Fantasy Game Shows Up in Ireland

Ireland-based Ubecha.com is launching what seems to be a daily-game style fantasy platform for the upcoming World Cup. The press release is short on specific details of the game, but the general description seems to be in line with the short-turnaround, quick-payout games that have been popping up all over the place on the American fantasy sports scene recently. (The name of the site and discussion of “betting” in the release exemplifies a different marketplace the one governed by the UIGEA.)

Silly Little Quiz

As part of its promotion for Silly Little Game, ESPN.com put together a quick quiz on the origination of rotisserie baseball. (I got a decent 7 out of 10 correct, without cheating. I swear on my Rafael Palmeiro rookie card.)

Time to Get Silly

The ESPN 30 for 30 fantasy documentary Silly Little Game premiered tonight, and here’s a semi-review Steve Gardener of USA Today. (We had to DVR it here at FSB.com headquarters for viewing after a week and a half of visiting the South.)

Thursday, April 15

Where’s Fantasy Players?

Visitors to FantasyPlayers.com — which is owned by Fantasy Sports Ventures and serves as the online home for their Fantasy Players Network — will notice that the site is currently redirecting to KFFL.com. KFFL’s Ryan Bonini told FSB.com that this is a temporary move while the company is “revamping” FantasyPlayers.com. We’ll check back in with details on the changes once the site is back up.

TMR Dynamite

14-year-old Matthew Berry = Napoleon Dynamite?

Fantazzle Introduces NBA Playoff Game

Fantazzle has launched a salary-cap fantasy game for the NBA playoffs, which open on Saturday.

30 for Rotisserie

Tuesday marked 30 years since Daniel Okrent gathered a group of friends/colleagues in a French restaurant in New York and created Rotisserie baseball. To celebrate the anniversary, ESPN’s Nate Ravitz and Tristan Cockcroft put together a cool retrospective — with links to other material that’s part of the ‘Silly Little Game’ project.

Wednesday, April 14

Personal Fantasy Baseball

Ever wondered how your favorite personal-finance bloggers might fare against each other in a fantasy baseball league? You haven’t? Oh, well, they’re taking each other on anyway, with $100 going to the chosen charity of the winner.

Big Job on the Market

Craigslist is displaying an ad for a six-figure position to lead fantasy games development for a new company, apparently based in Manhattan. The startup is looking for someone with plenty of gaming experience to serve as “Chief Games Development Officer.”

Monday, April 12

WCOFF Event in Chicago

The World Championship of Fantasy Football announced Monday that Chicago will join the list of locations hosting main-event drafts. The events will take place Sept. 10 and 11, with Atlantic City, Orlando and Las Vegas also playing host.

Friday, April 9

NBA, NHL Playoff Fantasy Games Launched

Fantasy Postseason has added games for the upcoming NBA and NHL playoffs to its repertoire.

‘Silly Little Game’ Less Than 2 Weeks Away

ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary on fantasy sports, Silly Little Game, will premier on April 20 (a Tuesday) at 8 p.m. This site shows a clip (interview snippets with some members of Daniel Okrent’s original rotisserie baseball league), as well as some re-air dates and times.

An App That Makes Them Say Yahoo!

AppleGazette.com gives an “A” to the Yahoo! 2010 fantasy baseball app for the iPhone.

Max Takes a Swing at Baseball

SportsGrumblings.com’s “supercomputer,” Mighty Max, is now generating weekly and daily player rankings for fantasy baseball.

Thursday, April 8

What 2 Watch 4

Time.com mentions Bloomberg’s new fantasy baseball tools (and incorrectly states the pricing) at No. 7 in its list of the “Top 10 Things to Watch for This Baseball Season.”

So Four Years Ago

None other than The Wall Street Journal points out that Washington’s offense looks really good to fantasy football owners right now — or at least it would if we were back in 2006.

More Fantasy Players, More Arguments to Solve

Sarah Talalay of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel recently wrote an article about the increase in sites offering fantasy sports dispute-resolution services, focusing on FantasyDispute.com, SportsJudge.com and RotoUmpire.com (but leaving out FantasyJudgment.com). The bit of actual news buried inside the feature, however, is that CBSSports.com is developing an “online club for commissioners” to be rolled out for either the 2010 football season or 2011 baseball. Similar to the dispute-resolution sites, it’s meant to serve as a resource for commissioners to seek help with any issues facing their fantasy leagues.

Roto Ohno

This blogger for Baseball Daily Digest thinks that fantasy baseball’s rotisserie system of scoring needs to go away.

About Time for Fantasy Baseball

General info portal About.com just added a couple of weekly fantasy baseball columns to help people plan for the week ahead.

Wednesday, April 7

FanDuel Partners with Philly.com

Philly.com — the online home of Philadelphia’s two daily newspapers, the Inquirer and Daily News — has launched a daily fantasy sports platform, powered by FanDuel.

Monday, April 5

CFL, Eh?

No joke: A group of Canadian fantasy football fans have banded together to fill the void for a Canadian Football League fantasy game and named their project Fantas-Eh.

MLB.com Turns 10

MLB.com extols its virtues as it enters its 10th season.

‘Fantasy’ Nearing Reality

This ain’t real fantasy basketball, but LeBron James’ planned big-screen debut, Fantasy Basketball Camp, has picked up a director and looks like it’s going to happen. I think the best we can hope for is that no cartoon aliens show up and LeBron stays out of any genie lamps.

Friday, April 2

Blabbelon Targets Fantasy

This news release from Blabbelon caught my eye. Blabbelon is a Web service that allows for voice chatting without having to download software. The particularly interesting thing about the recent news release is that it specifically targets fantasy players, even though there’s no mention of fantasy on the Blabbelon site. Based on that, it seems apparent that Blabbelon realizes the potential to partner with sites that host fantasy leagues and/or drafts.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!

Despite making up less than 5 percent of the player population, Australians are apparently dominating Britain’s biggest fantasy “football” competition, centered on the English Premier League.

Bloomberg League in Focus

Martha Mitchell of Texas was chosen to manage a team (along with her daughter) in Bloomberg’s pro-am “expert” competition and was featured on a Houston TV station as a result.

Thursday, April 1

Grogans Done at Athlon

Sometime in the middle of March, Dan and Kelly Grogan officially parted ways with Athlon, which bought Grogan Sports back in 2006. Dan told FSB.com that the split was brought about by “a difference in business philosophy.” At this point, we don’t really think it’s worth chasing details on either side about why this happened. The bottom line is this: The Grogans have been around this industry since before most people probably would have recognized it as an industry. They’re influential fantasy folks with many friend among many different fantasy companies. We wish Dan and Kelly the best in whatever their next step may be. For it’s part, Athlon has built a highly respected brand in sports publishing and has seemed to further embrace fantasy over the past couple of years.

SportsGrid to Rank the Buzz

Mediaite plans to launch this month a site that will offer a different kind of sports rankings. In addition to taking player performance into account, SportsGrid.com will consider factors such as franchise values and Twitter followers to basically compare the market value of figures throughout sports — not just the athletes. Among the companies supporting the effort is RotoWire.

Wednesday, March 31

If No One Drafts a Player, Does He Make Fantasy Noise?

Injury-riddled NFL receiver Javon Walker: I just want to mess up everybody’s fantasy league (in 2010), wondering where he’d come from.

Forget My Music, Let’s Talk Fantasy

There are probably people who have never heard of (or don’t recall knowing) the band Pavement but know lead singer Stephen Malkmus to be a devoted fantasy player. This profile by Chuck Klosterman for GQ gives us more details of the breadth of Malkmus’ devotion, as well as the fact that he’d much rather talk about sports than his music.

Branding Fantasy

This blogger, with a stated background in marketing, gives an interesting overview of the fantasy sports scene from the perspective of why it should entice brand marketers.

Fanhouse Favorites

Fanhouse fantasy writer R.J. White recently (OK, kinda recently) shared some of Fanhouse’s favorite fantasy baseball resources from around the Web. It’s worth noting when a site feels strongly enough about someone else’s value to direct Web visitors elsewhere.

Monday, March 29

Carpenter Put it Together

Nando Di Fino of The Wall Street Journal reports that Chris Carpenter boasted the highest winning percentage among owned baseball players in CBSSports.com’s 2009 fantasy leagues: 58.6 percent of teams that included Carpenter won their leagues.

Friday, March 26

Attax of the Baseball Cards

This Wall Street Journal story tells about how the Michael Eisner-managed Topps company is revitalizing its sports-card sales with Attax, a game that incorporates some elements of fantasy.

No, Fantasy Football Just Isn’t for Mental Midgets

Gentlemen (and ladies) for some reason, Zazzle.com thinks you might be interested in this overpriced, fantasy-themed toilet paper.

FleaFlicker for Phones

AOL-owned fantasy commissioner site FleaFlicker now has a free iPhone app for team management and tracking. For a full introduction, allow me to present Fanhouse’s Tom Herrera.

Thursday, March 18

Get Ready to Play Fantasy Ball

With baseball season drawing ever closer, The New York Times highlighted a few iPhone apps for baseball nuts and fantasy players: FanGraphs, RotoWire’s draft kit, iScore, K-ForCE, Yahoo!’s upcoming app and MLB’s At Bat 2010.

Nothing Like Going Through LABR

The League of Alternate Baseball Realities is one of the best-known and longest-running “expert” fantasy leagues. The AL-only draft took place earlier this week, and here’s what each owner thought about his team afterward.

Bleacher Report Opens Window to Half-Priced CBS Leagues

When SportingNews.com announced the end of its fantasy-games hosting, it also told users about a deal with CBSSports.com to host leagues at half-price ($90 instead of $180). CBS has also partnered with BleacherReport.com to offer the same deal via that site.

Tuesday, March 16

Plenty Going on with MLBAM

BizofBaseball.com offers a roundup of recent news regarding MLB Advanced Media’s dealings and announced partnerships.

PC World Likes Huddlehub

This writer for PC World checked out the presentations on smart-phone apps at the South by Southwest festival and was impressed by Huddlehub (among others). This app gives you a centralized location from which to manage teams from Yahoo!, ESPN, CBS Sports, RapidDraft.com and Fanball.

Monday, March 15

Fantasy Killing Football the World Over

Check it out, comrades. It’s not only here in the United States that traditionalists believe our fantasy games are the root of all sporting evil.

Tuesday, March 9

Keep Your Oscars Pool Legal

A writer for the Hollywood Reporter applied the letter of the well-known (at least around these parts) federal UIGEA law to the common practice of holding Academy Awards pools. His assessment: As long as you stick to the same types of money rules that govern fantasy-games providers, there’s enough skill involved to keep things legit.

But Can It Make You Put the Thing Down?

Switched.com rates the MyFantasyTeams application among the best sports apps available for the Blackberry.

The Most Valuable FF Positions?

Dave Richard of CBSSports.com uses the site’s Tableau-produced analytics to compare value across positions for the past football season.

Fantasy US Weekly

RotoHog has signed on to build a celebrity-based fantasy game for US Weekly magazine.

Can You See it Now? Good

Verizon Wireless and the NFL announced a deal Tuesday that will present live football coverage to the handsets of Verizon customers for at least the next four years — including fantasy panacea the Red Zone Channel.

Saturday, March 6

Checking in with Yahoo! Mobile

Online Media Daily recently spoke with David Katz, vice president of Yahoo! Mobile North America, to find out more about the company’s mobile strategies. Fantasy, for what it’s worth, came up several times.

Too Much Math?

Another interesting bit from USA Today’s Steve Gardner: We fantasy folks tend to rely on as much math as possible, particularly when it comes to baseball. But at what point do you go too far for your audience?

Fantasy FAQ

Steve Gardner of USA Today takes an interesting look through the 10 most-asked fantasy baseball questions according to Ask.com (and, of course, the answers) — broken down into Part 1 and Part 2.

Fantasy a Serious Hobby

Mediapost’s OMMA talks fantasy among the fun hobbies that induce serious investments of time and money from participants. The writer talks with Craig Davis of Fantasy Planet for some specifics on our industry.

Saturday, February 27

Fantasy Continues to Grow

This fairly sizable story from Medill Reports (of Northwestern University’s Medill School) doesn’t break any fantasy-industry news, but it does offer some interesting tidbits from fantasy’s past and what might lie ahead.

Bloombergers Help You by Helping Themselves

NewJerseyNewsroom.com has the story of the two Bloomberg developers — Bo Moon and Jay Lee (names that would also be acceptable for rock drummers and SEC quarterbacks) -  who got tired of losing their fantasy baseball leagues and came up with the new analytical tools that have made such a media splash in recent weeks.

You Seriously Still Don’t Respect Fantasy?

Fantasy sports have undeniably made their way into the mainstream of the American sporting scene, but Fanhouse’s Matt Snyder apparently still encounters too many hard-line haters.

When to Draft?

How early is too early to hold your fantasy baseball draft? That’s what SportingNews.com’s Bill Bender is pondering. My official answer: January 25.

See You in the League

Pavement bandmate Bob Nastanovich told Chuck Klosterman in a recent magazine profile that the easiest way to reach frontman Stephen Malkmus is via the trade desk in their fantasy league.

Dream11 + 4

Dream11.com has announced an agreement to provide content for four other online cricket outlets: Cricketnirvana.com, Zeecric.com, Oneindia.com and Amarujala.com.

Which One Are You?

SportingNews.com’s Ben Valentine runs through the eight types of owners you’ll find in the typical fantasy baseball league. Which one sounds like you?

Friday, February 26

Show Me the Logo

FantasyAgent.com — a not-yet-live site that wants participants to “sign” athletes to build best possible client portfolio — is holding an open competition for the design of its logo. About four days remain until the deadline.

FSV Adds SchoolYourPool.com

Fantasy hockey content site SchoolYourPool.com has joined Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network.

The Fantasy 50K

Pay the Fan has partnered with the Motor Racing Network on a fantasy NASCAR competition with a $50,000 top prize. Consumers can join for free with the purchase of tickets to a qualifying Nextel Cup race.

Before There Was a Name for It

Fantasy sports presented the best kind of social-networking before we ever started to even use that term. Tommy Landry (a “senior analyst” for RotoExperts.com) uses his Return on Now blog to explain what qualifies fantasy sports as meaningful social networking.

Wednesday, February 24

Please Tell Me This Never Happens

This blogger thinks a fantasy art-auction league could be viable, where participants would draft artists and then score each time an artist sold a painting via auction house. Hey, who am I to judge? I played a year of fantasy XFL.

NASCAR Domain Available, but Be Careful

Derrick Eckardt of FantasyEthos.com points out that the fairly favorable Web domain FantasyNASCAR.com can be had, but there are reasons to be wary if you think you want to buy it.

A Different-Looking Chance

Fighting Chance Fantasy recently redesigned its site.

Thursday, February 18

For the Committed Fantasy Football Player

Footballguys.com writer Jeff Pasquino (a 2008 finalist for FSWA football writer of the year) and a partner have launched DynastyGuys.com, aimed at fantasy football players in year-to-year dynasty formats.

Wednesday, February 17

Racing Writers Rally

“Expert” drafts abound on the Web these days in baseball and football, but you don’t come across too many for fantasy NASCAR. That’s why I pass along to you this writeup on KFFL’s maiden “challenge.”

Fanhouse on Your Phone

Fanhouse has released its own iPhone app, which feeds news, articles, etc. straight to your handset. Throw in a Jay Mariotti dartboard, and I’d be sold.

Quite a Catch

FLW Outdoors chairman Irwin Jacobs — founder of FantasyFishing.com — was inducted into the bass fishing hall of fame on Tuesday. The hall, centered in Hot Springs, Ark., has been around since 1999.

Friday, February 12

BWW Likes Fantasy Role

As part of the company’s recent fourth-quarter (2009) earnings report, Buffalo Wild Wings president Sally J. Smith pointed to the role that fantasy football played in the restaurant chain’s fall marketing. We know that their efforts have likely at least hooked the Fantasy Football Librarian as a lifelong fan.

Yesteryear Enters Today

Yesteryear officially announced the opening of it’s Fantasy Challenge on Friday, with games to begin on Valentine’s Day. (Now you guys know what to do for your wives …) We’ll have more on the interesting new concept in the coming days.

You Are No Match for My 8-Year-Old

This story has absolutely nothing to do with fantasy, but it could. Quick, someone start up a fantasy child weightlifting game.

Thursday, February 11

The ‘Official’ Derby Fantasy Game

It’s not easy to find on KentuckyDerby.com unless you already know the name of the game, but the “official” Derby site presents a fantasy game called “Road to the Roses” to accompany the Triple Crown events.

Yahoo! It’s Auction Time

Users are no doubt already aware that Yahoo! has launched its 2010 baseball commissioner product. This year, the system has added support for auction-style drafting.

Super Trip

The Fantasy Football Librarian just got back from a busy trip to Miami for Super Bowl XLIV — thanks to her win in the Buffalo Wild Wings bloggers league — and has some photos and details.

Fantasy on Two Wheels

You already loved Motorcycle-USA.com, and it can only get better with a new section devoted to fantasy. Real fans of two-wheeled racing can also play for a trip to this year’s U.S. Grand Prix.

Monday, February 8

Tracking Fantasy

The Sports Business Journal has planned for a March 1 release an “In Depth” report on fantasy sports. According to its announcement: “We’ll call upon our team of fantasy experts to find out which segments of the business are growing the fastest. We’ll introduce you to the key players in this space and outline some of the products that have gained the most traction with consumers.”

How to Market in Social Media

We all know how important it is these days to get our marketing messages out there via social media. This week, eMarketer is running a series on how to do so properly.

New UEFA Fantasy Game

European fantasy games site Sportsbox.com has added a salary-cap contest for the second half of the Champions League season. It’s interesting to note that Champions Fantasy Knock-Out is a pay-to-play game.

He Didn’t Help Your 2009 Fantasy Team

Many football fans may have forgotten about Anthony Gonzalez soon after he went down with a knee injury in Week 1, but fantasy owners who drafted the Colts wideout as a No. 2 receiver sure didn’t. CBSSports.com senior fantasy writer Jamey Eisenberg wrote a feature over the weekend on Gonzalez, who will be an interesting fantasy case heading into 2010.

Can’t Top MLB.com

It’s just one guy’s opinion but still interesting to note that this staff writer for Connecticut’s New Britain Herald dubs MLB.com the best site on the Web. Let fantasy baseball season officially begin.

Saturday, February 6

Dream11 Held Up as Example

Recent FSB.com profile subject got a writeup from The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino this week, in which he suggested that American fantasy-game providers could learn from the site’s graphical model.

Friday, February 5

FF Starters Gets Charitable

As part of its in-season Weekly Lineup Challenge, FantasyFootballStarters.com has donated $1,000 to NFL-sposored charity Play It Smart on behalf of winner Alan LaFollette.

Which is the Better Half?

This AP story purports to be about rising female participation in fantasy, but it’s actually just a fun read about a few women who like to challenge the men in their leagues and their lives. (Let’s just hope that the Kansas University alum who fancies former Jayhawks for her fantasy hoops team has at least tended to get Paul Pierce.)

Fantasy Run for the Roses

If you can lead the field in “stable earnings” through April 17 in this new fantasy horse-racing game, you can win a trip to this year’s Kentucky Derby.

STATS Gets ‘Official’ with MLBAM

MLB Advanced Media announced this week a deal with STATS that makes the latter the “official real-time data licensor” for MLBAM statistics and information. It’s a multi-year deal that extends to baseball’s minor leagues. It can be tough to really understand just what this kind of deal means, but federal courts have told us in recent years that stats exist in the public domain. Ultimately, then, such a distribution agreement would seem to cover only the “official” MLB stats. Anyone attending or watching a game, though, can compile the same numbers.

Rotohog Does Deal with NASCAR

Socaltech.com reports that NASCAR.com has contracted with Rotohog to produce a stock-market style game for this season.

Thursday, February 4

But Don’t You Want to Kiss Her?

The $300,000 title check was handed out Thursday afternoon to the WCOFF champions by ESPN’s Suzy Kolber in Miami.

Pickemfirst Available for IE

FSB.com told you about Pickemfirst’s cool fantasy-assistance tool back in October, at which point it was only available as a Firefox plug-in. Well, now you can download a toolbar for Internet Explorer. Just like the first offering, this toolbar connects whatever you’re reading on the Web directly to the fantasy leagues you enter, allowing you to see right away if a certain player is available. The toolbar covers NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL formats.

Wednesday, February 3

Out at Fidelity, In with WCOFF

Could getting fired from his job at Fidelity for running a fantasy football league actually be a good thing for Cameron Pettigrew? Not only have the folks at WCOFF invited him to join the 2010 main event free of charge, they’re treating him as a guest this week at the Super Bowl. He’ll also be blogging on fantasy football for Fanhouse this fall.

Monday, February 1

Another Outlet for RotoWire Preview

Perhaps you’re sitting there looking over the RotoWire fantasy baseball draft kit on your PC and iPhone, wishing that you could get just one more electronic format. Well, if you’re a Kindle owner, you can now purchase the baseball preview magazine wirelessly.

Friday, January 28

iWon’t

OPENSports.com’s Chris Chester states it in terms that I probably wouldn’t use, but his issues with the iPad pertaining to viewing baseball games and accessing fantasy baseball make sense.

RedZone for the Smartphone

The NFL RedZone Channel on my cell phone? Yes, please. (Now all I need is a phone on which I can watch it …) The appeal of this channel to fantasy players is obvious for anyone familiar with the concept. If you’ve been asleep for a while, it’s a channel that shows every score (touchdowns and field goals) through the day games on NFL Sundays, switching live to contests in which one time is nearing the end zone.

Mastersball, CREATiVE Combine

The news slipped by us at holiday time, but Mastersball.com and CREATiVE Sports have merged, operating under the Mastersball heading since the start of 2010. As fantasy veteran Lawr Michaels explains in his open letter to readers, the move combines staffs long on experience. The outlet is also part of Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network.

Spreading the Credit

KFFL didn’t win any of the Accuracy Challenge categories but did finish an impressive second in both the baseball and football stat-projection portions. Aside from making sure that everyone was aware of that, KFFL’s Nicholas Minnix took the time to name the various people who have contributed.

FSC Honored to be Honored

The BlogTalkRadio folks have reason to be happy after their Fantasy Sports Channel took home two Fantasy Sports Trade Association awards at the winter conference in Las Vegas this week.

More on the Accuracy Challenge

We provided a short report Wednesday on CBS Sports winning the 2009 football rankings Accuracy Challenge, run by the Fantasy Football Librarian. Well, here’s much more information on the competition and the finishers via the Librarian’s post on The New York Times’ “Fifth Down” blog. A full list of participants can be found on the FF Librarian blog.

A Different Brand of Fantasy

I would never classify myself as a “gamer,” so the Blood Bowl concept doesn’t really appeal to me. That isn’t to say, of course, that a gory football game featuring orcs and other fantasy creatures isn’t interesting. It also can’t hurt Kyle Turley to have another league in which he qualifies.

Thursday, January 21

Nationwide Now on Our Side

NASCAR.com is debuting a new section devoted to the Nationwide Series, including a “first-of-its-kind, elimination-style” fantasy contest.

Man in the (Chat) Box

When you go to ESPN.com to chat about fantasy, who do you go for? Matthew Berry? Christopher Harris? How about former Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell? Cantrell had a relationship with ESPN all season, as the site hosted his “Alice in Chains & Friends Fantasy Football Charity League.” (Former NFL lineman Matt Willig beat musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd for the title.)

‘Silly Little Game’ to be Played in April

Less than a month after the start of baseball season, ESPN is scheduled to air the fantasy-focused documentary “Silly Little Game,” part of the network’s “30 for 30″ project. The film is set for April 20 at 8 p.m. and should include some footage/interviews from last summer’s FSTA conference in Chicago.

Neyer Teams with Imagine on Baseball Game

ESPN baseball writer Rob Neyer has signed on with Imagine Sports to collaborate on an online baseball simulation game, using stats of former players to play out virtual seasons.

Monday, January 18

Just Close Your Eyes and Draft

Those who won their leagues this year would probably dispute Nando Di Fino’s most recent Wall Street Journal column that deems fantasy football mostly luck-driven. Those who lost, however, might be more inclined to agree. Anyone who provides fantasy advice, on the other hand, should skip right to the part where an author says we “usually know nothing.”

Saber Rattling

We’ve learned over the past few years that sports statistics officially reside in the public domain. Deep Focus Inc., however, now wants to trademark a popular method of baseball statistical analysis: sabermetrics. The Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR, is fighting that effort.

Czar of the Web

Turner Sports has launched a website for basketball analyst Mike Fratello. Amid the other analysis and bits, the former coach of the NBA’s Grizzlies, Hawks and Cavaliers offers a weekly fantasy pick (apparently each Monday). The three players he has focused on so far include Celtics guard Tony Allen, Pacers center Roy Hibbert and Sixers guard Louis Williams.

Friday, January 15

A Tougher Brand of Fantasy

Soccer is the clear dominant international sport, and cricket has seemed to be on the rise the past couple of years, but don’t forget about rugby. The Irish Times hasn’t with its fantasy game for the 6 Nations tournament.

Fantasy on the College Hardwood

365FantasySports.com, which specializes in short-term fantasy contests, has added daily college basketball games to its lineup this season.

Thursday, January 14

Scrappy Little ESPN Keeps Climbing

ESPN Digital Media reportedly enjoyed a big year in 2009, including increased numbers in fantasy traffic. The fantasy football user base reportedly grew by 36 percent and brought a 38-percent rise in time spent there. Those numbers were dwarfed, however, by growth from the partnership with NBA.com that generated 63 percent more fantasy basketball users and a 162-percent increase in time spent on those pages over the same period the year before.

TIFA: This is Fantasy in Africa

All set for the Orange Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournament but wondering where you can get your fantasy hookup? Wonder no more.

Tuesday, January 12

FSTA Conference Adds a Pass Rusher

The FSTA announced Tuesday that former Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle John Randle will attend the upcoming conference in Las Vegas, as part of his promotional deal with TrenchFantasy.com. No word yet on whether he’ll be painting his face.

You Blockhead

Let’s just say that Charlie Brown probably wouldn’t have made for a high fantasy draft pick …

How Much Did He Really Make?

BizofBaseball.com’s new player salary database isn’t really related to fantasy at all, but it’s awesome — worth checking out. The database includes inflation adjustments to give a better idea of what old-timers made in current terms. (Hint: Still a ton less.)

RotoWire on Your Mobile

For the first time, RotoWire customers can buy the site’s fantasy baseball draft kit as an application for their iPhone (or iPod Touch).

Monday, January 11

We’re Not That Far into the New Year

It’s been almost two weeks since the article first ran, but it’s still worth taking a look at Nando Di Fino’s roundup of 2009 in the world of fantasy sports.

Prizes Don’t Stink

Stinkball.com is running a weekly game throughout the NFL playoffs in which each winner gets a football signed by San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis.

How Into Basketball Are You?

NBA-level fantasy basketball could stand to be a little stronger, but that doesn’t mean that die hards aren’t out there. Those that fall into that category might want to check out fantasy NBDL.

Friday, January 8

Twitter-boxing with Ocho

Fantasy veteran Scott Engel of RotoExperts passed along this link to Michael Fabiano’s Twit-for-tat with Chad Ochocinco in advance of the Bengals’ Week 17 matchup with the Jets. Fabiano, the lead fantasy guy for NFL.com and NFL Network, apparently drew Ocho’s Twitt-ire for having the gall to suggest sitting him against the Jets in a game the wideout ultimately came away from with zero catches.

Thursday, January 7

Fantasy Widows, Don’t Read This

For those of us who can’t bear to be separated from the ups and downs of our fantasy football squads come Sundays (and most Mondays, some Thursdays and a few Saturdays) each fall, a convergence of computer, television and mobile phone will soon help keep you in touch (or is that out of touch) no matter what you’re doing.

Real Fantasy? Fantastic Reality?

This concept might come closest to embodying a real-life fantasy offering: A Florida businessman wants to build an actual football league around a reality television start. Players would try out to qualify for a spot on the fan ballot, and viewers would select eight teams to then compete for a title. The public would also serve as team owners. Sounds interesting.

FSV On Board with Olympic Widget

The initial report is about a month old, unfortunately, but Fantasy Sports Ventures has teamed up with the U.S. Olympic Committee to develop and distribute a widget aimed at promoting the members of Team USA for next month’s winter Olympics.

When Will Fantasy Baseball Start?

Ready to move on to the next big fantasy regular season but can’t remember when things got going last time? This blogger at FantasyHurler.com has the dates on which the big boys launched fantasy baseball each of the past two years. Looks like CBSSports.com is a solid bet to toe the rubber first.

A Seat at the WCOFF Table

FantasyFanatics.com announced Tuesday that Mike Pera, owner of FantasyDraftTools.com, won the site’s inaugural preseason rankings game, which provides Pera an entry into the 2010 World Championship of Fantasy Football field.

Wednesday, January 6

FSTA FF Winners Include Fantazzle, RotoWorld, Us

The fantasy football draft that opened last June’s Fantasy Sports Trade Association summer conference filled three leagues, which were won by Fantazzle’s Ryan Parr, a RotoWorld team represented by Rick Wolf and lawyer Glenn Colton and Team RapidDraft, piloted by Yours Truly (with draft help from former colleague Caitlin Morrall). The most surprising note, however, has to be that none of the three championship squads sported Tennessee’s Chris Johnson.

Conn Has the 411

Jeff Thitoff of 411Fantasy.com has put the wraps on another season of the Experts Contest that be brought with him from his days with The Columbus Dispatch. The 2009 title went to Thitoff’s 411Fantasy colleague and fellow Dispatch veteran Adam Conn. Although you’ll find my name tied for second in the Week 17 rankings, you’ll have to scroll down farther in the full season edition to find me at 12th. (That’s no place to boast about, but I will at least say that I know of some prominent competitors who finished lower.) A lesser man might call shenanigans on a contest won by one of the hosts. Fortunately, I’m above that.

Librarian Goes to Miami

What did your last victory in an “expert” league (or home league, for that matter) get you? Pride? Some online publicity? A little money? Well, Sara Holladay — better known as the FF Librarian — will be heading to the Super Bowl next month thanks to her win in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bloggers League.

Monday, December 21

Free Playoff Leagues at MFL

The growing marketplace of fantasy offerings covering the NFL playoffs will once again include free league hosting by MyFantasyLeague.com.

Friday, December 18

Almost There

The Fantasy Lunch crew on The Fantasy Sports Channel interviewed Todd Infield on Thursday, the leader in the race for RapidDraft’s initial $250,000 prize.

Bloomberg Shows Baseball Wares

Biz of Baseball’s Maury Brown has a full breakdown of the new baseball analytics tools that finance giant Bloomberg unveiled at Major League Baseball’s recent winter meetings.

‘The League’ Will Stick Around

FX’s new comedy “The League,” centered (kinda) on a fantasy football league, has been picked up for a full second season that will begin in late summer 2010. The finale of the abbreviated first season aired Dec. 10.

Fantasy Dealing

Do you share Larry David’s dream of selling cars for a living? Well, this may not be the ideal time to go searching for an actual job as a car salesman, but you can take control of your own dealership with Fantasy Showroom.

Take to the Ice Weekly

Rotoplay recently opened a weekly fantasy hockey game.

Monday, December 7

Treating Meachem

New Orleans wide receiver Robert Meachem created a slight fantasy stir on Sunday when he returned a Washington fumble for a touchdown on a play that began with Washington intercepting a Drew Brees pass. The preferred treatment in leagues that don’t include individual defensive players (for whatever reason such leagues exist … ) seems to be to ignore the score for in Meachem’s point total. Our own Pat Hegewald explains why RapidDraft chose that path.

Friday, December 4

Bowling for Fantasy

Your fantasy college football season doesn’t have to end with regular-season games and conference championships. FantasyPostseason.com has opened up registration for its bowl-focused game.

He Plays a Mean Fiddle — and Fantasy Football

Hey, fantasy isn’t just for nerds? It’s for teenage violin prodigies as well …

Fantasy Stars Outside of Sports

The celebrity-centered fantasy format got a recent mainstream-media nod with this writeup by the Detroit Free Press.

Saturday, November 28

PPR or Not?

FantasyFootball.com’s Jonathan Bales takes a look at what it takes and what it means to switch your fantasy league over the point-per-reception scoring.

Footballguys Join Up with Lexy

Footballguys.com has partnered with Lexy.com to provide NFL information and analysis as part of the new “entertainment” site’s Lexycasts.

Baseball Daily Digest Adds Nova Feed

NovaFantasySports.com and Baseball Daily Digest have reached a content deal that will feature Nova’s baseball news updates and fantasy material on BDD’s site.

Fantazzle Keeping Busy

Fantazzle.com has weekly games open for basketball and hockey season and recently struck up a promotional partnership with Giants receiver Steve Smith.

Monday, November 23

FSTA Extends Awards Deadline

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association will be accepting awards nominations through Dec. 4. Winners will be announced at the winter conference in January.

MFL on Your Droid

MyFantasyLeague.com announces an app for new Droid phones and reminds developers of its open API (which, among other things, led to a partnership last year with Tony Holm and Fantasy Sharks).

Wednesday, November 18

Fantasy World

We tie our fantasy fortunes to the performances of football players, anglers, bull riders and “American Idol” contestants. Why not take a crack at predicting global performance with “fantasy geopolitics“? If there’s one thing the worldwide recession showed us, it’s that we can’t do much worse than the folks actually in charge of this stuff.

Fantasy Football Graces New ‘TV’ Genre

“Sundays of Our Lives” touts itself as a fantasy football comedy soap opera for the Web. Will it be funny? Will it be stupid? Will it at least pay more attention to the football than “The League” does? We’ll see when the first episode debuts. Until then, here’s the trailer …

Athlon Fantasy College Hoops Open

Athlon acquired college fantasy games producer U-Sports earlier this year, and the combined outlet is now live with its first season of fantasy college basketball. Although U-Sports was a pay site on its own, the Athlon version of the game is free.

FSTA Conference Agenda Released

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has announced the agenda for its upcoming winter conference, including a featured appearance from half of the husband-wife creative team behind “The League.”

Tuesday, November 17

Woman Not Against Fantasy Sports

Juliann Haynes checks in on the SportsJudge blog with Part 1 of her argument for why women should play, or at least support their significant others in playing, fantasy sports.

Friday, November 13

Starting a Fantasy Sports Business

Derrick Eckardt of FantasyEthos.com gives some insight into the process of starting a business in the fantasy sports industry. Just like with most things, make sure you really think, research and plan well before jumping in.

To Fantasy or Not to Fantasy?

A Columbia University senior ponders the abstract potential pros and cons of fantasy football while defending it to her father.

Fantasy, Demoff Go Way Back

Among the early experiences with football for Kevin Demoff, Rams executive VP of football operations and chief operating officer, was the fantasy team he ran at age 8 with his dad, superagent Marvin Demoff.

RedZone Channel Helps Drive NFL Network Spread

Following that lengthy standoff with cable companies, the NFL Network now credits some of its spread to the growing interest in and popularity of its RedZone Channel. The network that tracks every game on Sunday is particularly cited as catering to the interests of the fantasy player.

Friday, November 6

Expert of Experts

FantasyXPERT.com is aiming to sift through the bevy of fantasy football recommendations out there to single out the most accurate sources for info in different areas. In this post, the site lays out some of its findings for October.

Detroit News Features Fantasy Pros

Our own technology guy Phil Threadgould — who also founded and runs On Board Stats — was among the Michigan-based fantasy sports professionals featured in a recent write-up in the Detroit News.

Android Does Fantasy

Those who have jumped on board with Sprint’s new Android device already have an app to help them play Yahoo! fantasy football.

Fantasy Captives

Among other points on the subject of online marketing to the sports-fan audience, Clickz.com’s Tessa Wegert points out what a favorable target the fantasy sports player can be.

Tuesday, November 3

Does Anyone Like ‘The League’?

Here’s another reviewer who didn’t like FX’s new comedy “The League” and wishes it had taken its fantasy football a bit more seriously.

Who Do you Like?

The Fantasy Football Librarian wants to find out in November who her readers like to go to for their fantasy advice. (No one would hold it against you if you felt compelled to vote for this guy in the “start/sit” category.)

Buffsters Hit Vegas

This year’s top finishers in SportsBuff.com fantasy baseball headed to Vegas before the MLB playoffs to enjoy the spoils and pick their post-season teams. Here’s a look at the strategy they took into the draft and the regular-season salary-cap game …

College Fantasy for a Good Cause

Vince Mullins of FantasyCollegeBlitz.com and some of his industry peers are into the playoff portion of their pro-am tournament that will donate $400 to a charity chosen by the winner. Don’t look now, but the “amateurs” make up more than 80 percent of the six-team playoff field.

What Might’ve Been

Ladd Biro of the Dallas Morning News takes a look back at what his draft board should have looked like from the fifth spot in a 10-team, “standard”-scoring fantasy football league.

Monday, November 2

Out with ‘The League’

Josh Bousquet of the Worcester Telegram didn’t like FX’s “The League” either.

Fantasy Funds, Real Prizes

For those interested in taking their fantasy play beyond the field/court/ice/track/etc., the Fantasy Fund Manager game that’s operated under the JP Morgan umbrella doles out £35,000 to its winner.

What Russo Likes

Fantasy Sports Ventures CEO Chris Russo was featured in today’s “What I Like” profile by Sports Business Journal.

Wednesday, October 28

That’s All it Takes

So, Scott McCoy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram seems to think that all one needs (in this case, Tony Romo) is a rear-facing ballcap to pass as a fantasy “expert.” I strongly resent such a flippant remark. What fantasy football writer would be caught dead in a backward hat?

Betfair Backs Watercooler

Betfair, a Britain-based sports gaming company, has thrown $5.5 million in investment behind Watercooler, which focuses on developing fantasy sports (and other) platforms for social networks.

Come On; It’s Funny

Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle, on the other hand, seems to like the humor put forth in “The League.” Is the show just more up the alley of a guy with a blog called The Bastard Machine?

The Potty-Mouthed ‘League’?

With FX’s “The League” and its purportedly fantasy football-centered theme set to debut Thursday night at 10:30, this review indicates the show will try to push the boundaries of basic-cable crudeness more than anything else.

Thursday, October 22

Tips for Baseball

This Nando Di Fino column ran in late September on The Wall Street Journal’s site, but the content remainst relevant. Di Fino, an avowed baseball guy who told FSB.com that he operated 14 fantasy teams in 2008, offers a few general suggestions for how to close the popularity gap between fantasy baseball and fantasy football.

ESPN, NBA Collaborate on Fantasy Game

Unfortunately, we missed this one during our September slowdown, but ESPN and NBA.com are presenting a co-branded fantasy basketball game for the quickly approaching season.

Fantasy in the Classroom

This middle-school teacher from Illinois who uses fantasy sports to teach math says it best: “If I can get them to play math with me, that’s like three-fourths of the battle.”

Wednesday, October 21

Stay Courant

The Hartford Courant’s website now features the Game Forecast service provided by Accuscore.

It’s Good to Share

NovaFantasySports.com recently announced a content agreement that will place its NFL news on PlayerPress.com’s homepage.

Forbes Checks in with FSV

Forbes.com recently posted a video in which national editor Michael Ozanion chats with Fantasy Sports Ventures founder Chris Russo about his company and the fantasy industry. Speaking of FSV, the company made its first actual investment in gaming in late September, when it purchased 25 games from RealTime Fantasy Sports. FSV also recently added Orangecast Social Media to its lineup.

NFL on the New Scene

NFL.com general manager Laura Goldberg will be at the Nov. 12 NewTeeVee Live conference to talk the big business of fantasy football.

Sporting News Wants 2010 Baseball Questions

We may not even be to the World Series yet this year, but Sporting News already wants to know what will be on your mind for the 2010 baseball season. The staff is soliciting questions from readers for the next yearbook, offering a free copy for any query that makes it into print.

Wednesday, October 14

Fantasy Not Knocked Out of Post-season

If you’re not ready to be done with fantasy baseball for 2009 just yet, FantasySportsMadness.com offers a game that renews for each round of the MLB playoffs.

Fantasy’s ‘Now We’ve Heard Everything’ Moment?

Let me just say that a fantasy competition is the only way I’d ever even consider taking part in a triathlon. If that concept sounds exciting to you, check out Fantasytri.com.

Which is Nerdier: Fantasy Sports or NPR?

Author Tony Horowitz told the audience of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered this week of his “guilty pleasure”: fantasy baseball books.

Tuesday, October 13

FF Nerd Helps Set Your Lineup

FantasyFootballNerd.com recently rolled out its Lineup Analyzer to help fantasy football owners set their lineups each week. The tool reads weekly rankings from 20 fantasy sites each week to produce aggregate suggestions depending on your scoring system.

Already Celebrating the Dodgers

No need to watch the rest of the playoffs. Information Builders, a “business intelligence solutions” firm, recently pumped its software full of 40 years of baseball statistics and determined that the Dodgers will knock off the Angels in the World Series.

View Matchups for Your Players

CBSSports.com debuted last week a new tool for fantasy football players. The Interactive Defense Matchup Tracker allows you to see how favorable a matchup your players (by position) might be facing this week, going forward and in games they’ve already played.

Monday, October 12

Rockies Come Together for Fantasy Football

Josh Fogg may be just some middle reliever for a team facing elimination from the Major League Baseball playoffs. Late in the year, though, he becomes a popular figure in the Colorado Rockies’ clubhouse because he serves as the commissioner for the team’s fantasy football league.

Surf Site’s Up

Fans of surfing’s World Qualifying Series on the Association of Surfing Professionals tour can now play a fantasy game to accompany the events via FantasyProSurfing.com.

Fantasy Football the ‘Best Marketing Program Ever’

We’ve mentioned before on this site about how companies of various sizes would do well to leverage the marketing opportunities inherent in fantasy sports and pointed out some examples where businesses have. This MediaPost columnist not only agrees with the strength of fantasy as a marketing platform but believes that it outdistances any competitors.

Monday, September 14

Even NPR is in on Fantasy’s Growth

There’s swimming in the mainstream, and then there’s cracking the NPR news lineup. A quick piece in the technology portion of NPR’s All Things Considered on Monday afternoon discussed the increase in female fantasy football players — including sound bytes from FSTA president Paul Charchian.

World Fantasy Games on Wisconsin Gamers Panel

Our own Jeff Thomas will join representatives from two other Wisconsin-based game companies on Sept. 22 for a panel discussion on the health of the industry in their state.

Friday, August 28

Survivor-Style Fantasy Football

Those who like to play in NFL survivor pools might find this fantasy game from FantasySportsMadness.com interesting: No player can be used more than once during the season. It should be easy to find a receiver of value each week, but selecting quarterbacks will take some forethought.

Draft Analyzer Comes to Your iPhone

Advanced Sports Media has launched two ways to get its Draft Analyzer on your iPhone. The free Cheat Sheet app provides player rankings and offers pick recommendations. The $4.99 Draft Analyzer Pro — Mock Draft lets you simulate a whole draft from your handheld with malleable league sizes, draft positions and competition levels.

USA Today Creates Fantasy Community Space

Fantasy Joe is among the online communities recently launched by USA Today. Moderators Matt Pitzer and Pete O’Brien moderate, post content and promise to address reader questions.

Wednesday, August 26

RotoExperts to Hit NFL.com

RotoExperts.com announced Tuesday a content deal with NFL.com that will place two articles a week amid the fantasy content on the league’s official website throughout the NFL season.

Fanball iPhone App Available

Fanball’s 2009 fantasy football application for the iPhone is now live.

RotoWire Hits Your iPhone

RotoWire has launched an iPhone app to meet “growing demand from our users for our information on mobile devices,” company president Peter Schoenke tells FSB.com.

Monday, August 24

Dimdim Offers FF Conferencing

Is Dimdim what you might call the stooge who still drafts like a newbie even though your league has been going for 13 years? Well, maybe, but it’s also a service that provides Web- and phone-conferencing for your fantasy football draft.

Fanball to Run USTA game

The USTA is running a bracket-style contest for the upcoming U.S. Open, a game that will be built and managed by Fanball. The final Grand Slam tennis event of the year is set to being Aug. 31, with the bracket game to become available after the draws are announced on Aug. 27.

Tuesday, August 18

College Hoops in the Zone

There aren’t too many avenues for a fantasy player to pursue college basketball, but one is the Big Chief Challenge on FCBLZone.com with Perry Missner, friend to FSB.com, former World Fantasy Games associate editor and one of the few writers out there devoted to fantasy college hoops.

Best Buy Returns to Fantasy Football

Electronics retail chain Best Buy will be presenting a weekly fantasy football game this season. Among the few details currently available on the game’s early sign-up page are that celebrities will be involved as weekly competitors, prizes will include laptops, game consoles and other such products that you can typically find at Best Buy. FSTA president and LeagueSafe founder Paul Charchian said via Facebook that he has been working with Best Buy in this effort. We’ll have more in the coming days on what to expect. Best Buy previously partnered with Fanball on a fantasy football game in 2004.

Sunday, August 16

Getting Ready to Rank the Rankings

The FF Librarian has opened up the fantasy football rankings accuracy challenge for this season. Anyone who publishes rankings before the start of the regular season can submit his or her efforts to [email protected] to be included. Check here for a full explanation. Last year’s winner was Fantazzle.

Friday, August 14

Football Widows Take Double Shot

Between fantasy football getting into full swing and the release of Madden 2010, there will be no shortage of distracted fans of “virtual football.” Do you “lose” anyone like Jessica Rovello of The Huffington Post does?

Thursday, August 13

Straight from the Millionaire’s Mouth

Shane Schroeder, last year’s winner of the inaugural million-dollar prize from the Fantasy Football Open Championship, (who is hanging on to his day job for some reason) dishes to The Associated Press on what he expects in the coming football season.

Wednesday, August 12

The ‘Expert’ League You Really Want to Play in

The National Football Post will apparently give a big-screen plasma TV (of yet-undetermined size) to the winner of its league of fantasy football “experts.”

Versus to Deal in Sports Biz

The cable network best known as the relative Siberia to which the NHL playoffs were once banished will debut a sports business show, The $ports Take, on Aug. 25 at 6:30 p.m.

Donation Site Established for CFF Benefit

The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has set up a donation site for The Audible’s Drive for Cystic Fibrosis — the 12-hour Fantasy Sports Channel event that will be hosted by Footballguys.com’s Cecil Lammey and Sigmund Bloom on Saturday, Aug. 29.

Saturday, August 8

VC or No VC?

This article from The Wall Street Journal asks the question: Have we gotten to the point where Internet startups don’t need the help of venture capital? Ours is an industry built on Web startups, so the question is clearly pertinent. Although the article doesn’t necessarily answer it — it would be foolish to think there is a single right answer — it does raise some interesting points for consideration.

Pay Content Works in Fantasy

Minonline.com opened a series to look at pay content online last month, pointing to fantasy sports as one area in which such models work.

Friday, August 7

New Market-Style Game to Market

AthleteXchange.com has launched another stock-market type of game.

NCAA Avoids Betting States

The NCAA clarified Thursday its policy of not allowing championship events to take place in states that support single-game betting. Montana, which made news last year by launching a fantasy-style lottery game, is not subject to that ban.

Thursday, August 6

Site Sorts Through Twitter Clutter

It can be easy to get lost in the flurry of updates from NFL writers and fantasy folks on Twitter now that training camps have opened. Fortunately, FantasyFootballWhiz.com is sifting through each day and centralizing the pertinent football info.

Wednesday, August 5

Sports Data Hub Launches in Full

Football stat producer SportsDataHub.com is stepping out of its beta phase in preparation for the coming season.

FanDuel Encourages You to Square Off

FanDuel officially launched in late July its short-window, head-to-head fantasy competitions. Customers can select new teams with each new set of games in football or baseball season and directly challenge another person for that day. The games are also available via Twitter and Facebook. Users can also make wagers on their competitions, up to the $25 cap.

Monday, August 3

Yahoo! Frees Up StatTracker

Yahoo! Sports, whose fantasy football game draws the most participants of any online outlet, has announced that it will provide its StatTracker, live-scoring feature for free this year. In the past, it had been part of the pay commissioner package and offered for purchase to any user.

Saturday, August 1

CBSSports.com Delivers RapidReports

CBS Sports launched this week a system of Twitter-like news updates from writers dedicated to each NFL team. The reports appear at the top of the CBSSports.com homepage and the delivery can be customized by users.

FSV in the Washington Times

The Times recently profiled Fantasy Sports Ventures and its collection of smaller fantasy sites known as the Fantasy Players Network.

Thank Daniel Okrent for WHIP

Did you know that Rotisserie baseball founding father Daniel Okrent is also responsible for the existence of the baseball stat WHIP (walks+hits/innings pitched)? Not many do.

Watercooler Trying to Play Revenue Game on Facebook

As part of its Fantasy Football 2009 Facebook app, Watercooler Inc. is exploring various methods of revenue generation.

MASN Launches Second-Half Baseball Game

Baltimore-based MASNsports.com is hosting a salary-cap fantasy game, which opens on Monday, centering on the second half of the Major League Baseball season.

Citizen Sports Drawing Soccer Fans on Facebook

The Sports Business Daily reports that Citizen Sports says it is enjoying a strong, swift response to its fantasy English Premier League soccer offering on Facebook.

Thursday, July 30

Vegas SuperDraft Gaining Steam

The Las Vegas Fantasy Football SUPERDRAFT appears to be building momentum for its debut. The new website touts appearances by former WCW Nitro Girl Stacy Keibler and ESPN’s Matthew Berry (we’ll let you decide which one’s prettier) and performances by rapper Flo Rida and George Clinton’s band. Although he’s not mentioned on the homepage, Maurice Jones-Drew appears to be involved somehow.

All That’s Missing is Seinfeld

The Fantasy Sports Channel on BlogTalkRadio debuts its “Must-Stream Thursday” lineup tonight from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. It will feature shows from WCOFF, Fantasy Guru, RotoExperts (Scott Engel), The Fantasy Football Guys and Footballguys.com’s The Audible.

Sunday, July 26

Fantasy Phenoms Joins RapidDraft

RapidDraft.com has added Fantasy Phenoms to the ranks of affiliate sites for the debut season.

Dave & Buster’s Targets Fantasy Drafters

Restaurant-entertainment chain Dave & Buster’s has put together a promotional package aimed at drawing fantasy football players to D&B for their drafts. The offer page says that the package includes “Free Draft Kit and Fantasy Magazine,” though it doesn’t specify the outlet. CBSSports.com is mentioned in the promo, but it no longer puts out a print preview magazine.

Thursday, July 23

OPEN Sports Raises $4 Million

In the wake of its deal to put on fantasy games for FOXSports.com, OPEN Sports announced a $4 million round of funding. Investors were not disclosed.

Wednesday, July 22

As if Fantasy Football Didn’t Run on Enough Testosterone …

The Texas Testosterone Festival in Austin on August 15 will feature a live expert fantasy football mock draft, including industry folks such as Footballguys.com’s Sigmund Bloom and Marc Faletti, TheHuddle.com’s David Dorey and Darin Tietgen, RotoExperts.com’s Tommy Landry, ecouchcoach.com’s Eric Mattingly, 4for4.com’s Jeff Owens and FantasyInsights.com’s Pete Smits. Ladd Biro, a Dallas Morning News columnist and Sporting News fantasy contributor will host.

This One Time, at FF Camp …

KFAN and the Treasure Island Resort & Casino of Red Wing, Minn., are hosting a “Fantasy Football Camp” on August 15 with radio host and FSTA president Paul Charchian doing the station’s fantasy show live and the resort hosting league drafts. The group of experts also includes Bo Mitchell of Fantasy Football Champs, Christian Peterson of LeagueSafe and FF Champs and John Tuvey of TheHuddle.com.

Tuesday, July 21

FanHuddle Launches Sports Community

Front Office Sports Enterprise will launch FanHuddle — a sports blog network, with forums and a fantasy sports presence as well — in September.

Wednesday, July 15

AOL to Buy MMA Site

AOL is reportedly working on a deal to acquire MMAFighting.com, which will then serve as the hub of mixed martial arts coverage for Fanhouse.com.

Thursday, July 9

NTN Partners with WFG

NTN Buzztime has announced partnerships with four companies on its upcoming “25 Years of Sports Trivia” competition. Among the strategic partners is World Fantasy Games — which owns this site and RapidDraft.com, among others. Readers probably know NTN best for those bar trivia games in which you always finish no better than second behind the same team.

Thursday, July 2

Fantasy Disorder in the Court

Nando Di Fino either blew the Wall Street Journal legal budget this week or proved that lawyers have far too much time on their hands to claim an hour is worth $500. He pulls together the opinions of seven actual lawyers on how to handle trades and related controversies in your fantasy league.

RotoWire Comes to Your BlackBerry

There are an ever-growing number of fantasy-related iPhone apps, but what about the BlackBerry? You can download a free RotoWire application that delivers player news right to your device. (BlackBerry users can follow this link.)

Wednesday, July 1

What’s Drafted in Vegas …

Brand Interaction Group and Bookem Danno Productions want you to take your league draft to Las Vegas as part of the SUPERDRAFT package.

Wednesday, June 24

RapidDraft Partners with YouGabSports

YouGabSports.com has signed on as an affiliate site for RapidDraft, the new fantasy football game launched by the company that also brings you this site. RD also now has its blogs and forums area live — including the “Fantasy Island” blog from one particularly intelligent and handsome writer.

FASL Finds Wake League Partner

The Fantasy Action Sports League has reached a deal with wakeboard company Liquid Force to back prizes for its fantasy wakeboarding offerings.

National Football Post Gets Makeover

As part of site changes and upgrades, the National Football Post has expanded its fantasy football presence.

Rallypoint Joins Up with Vizio

Among a group of new partnerships recently announced by HDTV producer Vizio is one with Rallypoint Sports, which provides customizable fantasy platforms for Internet-ready TVs.

Saturday, June 20

Lessons in LABR

USA Today’s Steve Gardner says that fantasy players can still benefit from looking at what the “experts” do in leagues such as the Leagues of Alternate Baseball Reality.

FSV Goes Social

Fantasy Sports Ventures announced earlier this week a new operating unit that will focus on social media. The effort includes partnerships with RotoHog, Watercooler and Sky Social Media.

Tuesday, June 16

RapidDraft Officially Announces

The “first ever 3D fantasy football” game is out there for all the world to play.

Your Baseball Haven?

One Connecticut quartet hopes to use the new (and social networking-enabled) concept of “crowdsourcing” to field a baseball team in Connecticut. The proposed cost to citizen owners would be $100.

How to Make a Mobile App Work

eMarketer interviewed Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets and an angel investor, about what makes for a successful mobile application.

Monday, June 15

Making Money in Space

This column from The Globe and Mail asserts that not enough companies are leveraging increased bandwidth to the degree they should.

It Takes a Village …

FantasyPros911.com announced today a new community that (among other things) allows users to log in with their Facebook sign-in.

Friday, June 12

Eckardt’s Fantasy Ethos Hits the Web

Derrick Eckardt, who founded and ran RotoNation up until the end of last year, has resurfaced in the fantasy sports arena with his own new site, FantasyEthos.com. The initial post showed up on June 1.

Which NFL Team Would Win Fantasy League?

This Bleacher Report contributor says the Saints have the league’s best fantasy roster, with Arizona, Houston, Atlanta and New England rounding out his top five. What do you think?

What Now with Strasburg?

Now that MLB’s top overall draft pick, Stephen Strasburg, is finally an official member of the Washington Nationals’ organization, USA Today’s Steve Gardner surveys a bit of the early opinion on the young hurler.

Fantasy Loyalty Survey

An apparent doctoral candidate at the University of Northern Colorado says he is seeking participants for a survey of how loyal fantasy players are to their primary commissioner outlets. The form does have spaces for name and e-mail address at the end for purposes of entering a drawing, but the survey can be completed anonymously (leaving those spaces blank).

iLogon Users Get RotoWire Access

iLogon — which bundles sites and applications and sells access to users — has reached a deal with Roto Sports that adds RotoWire.com to its package.

Wednesday, June 10

Schefter Move Becomes Official

ESPN has finally announced formally the addition of former NFL Network and NFL.com reporter Adam Schefter, a pending move that has been known publicly for a while. Schefter’s Sunday morning reports on NFL Network added quite a bit of value to the network’s pregame show for fantasy players last season and will be tough to replace in 2009.

Tuesday, June 9

Silly Little FSTA Gathering

The crew for the upcoming ESPN documentary “Silly Little Game” on the history and growth of the fantasy sports industry will be filming at the FSTA conference in Chicago next week. (Obviously, they heard that FSB.com will be there.)

Monday, June 8

STATS Does Deal for Cricket

The International Cricket Council announced a deal by which STATS becomes the “official data partner” for the governing body of cricket.

Fantasy Golfers Just as Nutty as the Rest of Us

This writeup in The New York Times tells us not only that participants in fantasy golf leagues spend just as much time yelling at the TV and lamenting bad streaks as those who play other fantasy sports, but also that there’s a whole set of frustrations specific to the links.

N.J. Governor Calls Ban on Sports Betting Unfair

New Jersey governor Jon Corzine says he doesn’t think it’s fair that the federal ban on sports gambling applies to some states and not others. His state, of course, appears on the “not” list.

Thursday, June 4

Here Comes the Blitz

The new fantasy college football season is also in full swing over at FantasyCollegeBlitz.com.

Wednesday, June 3

Football Site Up for Sale

Brian Moore, owner of FootballHangout.com is looking to sell his site.

Tuesday, June 2

How to Trade or Not

RotoWire’s Chris Liss presents the rules for proper etiquette in the fantasy trade market: (1) Make an offer. Don’t ask, “What do you want for … ?” (2) Respond in a timely fashion to reasonable offers. (3) Don’t try to rob the other owner. (4) Try to skip the snark when responding to ridiculous offers. (5) After a successful deal, bit your trading partner good luck. (I don’t know about you, but I and my leaguemates aren’t nearly this courteous.)

It’s a New Season

Athlon has “officially” kicked off it’s 2009 college football coverage, including the first year of its incorporation of U-Sports.

Friday, May 29

NCAA Rules Could Keep Playoffs Out of Montana

The recently launched fantasy sports lottery game in Montana could lead the NCAA to ban playoff games from taking place in Missoula, where the University of Montana has made the playoffs for 16 straight years. Could this soon be an issue for the Delaware Bluehens, too?

Yahoo! Sports Coming to iPhone

Yahoo! reportedly plans to release a fantasy sports application for the iPhone later this year.

Saturday, May 23

Who Ya Got?

Jon Williams wants to know who your favorite fantasy baseball “expert” is and why. After 51 votes, “Other” (43 percent) was leading the 10-option poll field by a wide margin, with Ron Shandler (14 percent), Matthew Berry (14 percent) and Jason Grey (12 percent) as the only others in double digits. Razzball.com was getting plenty of play in the early comments as well.

Get Your Wakeboarding Team Now

The MasterCraft Pro Wakeboard Tour has partnered with the Fantasy Action Sports League to present a fantasy wakeboarding game.

New Fantasy Game for Motorcycle Fans

An awkwardly written press release announces that ProMotoFan.com has launched as a host for pro Motocross and Supercross pick ‘em-style fantasy contests.

Online Sports Games Gaining Notice

The Wall Street Journal reports that free online sports games are gaining pretty significant audiences, potentially creating some new challenges for the makers of console games. The emergence of games such as Quick Hit football and MLB Dugout Heroes could also create opportunities or competition for fantasy sports providers in coming years.

Fashion Goes Glam

Glam Media has added Fashion Fantasy Game to its network, saying the site delivers “to advertisers a highly qualified and zealous audience” dominated by young women. Rather than a true fantasy game that relies on the performances of actual people, Fashion Fantasy Game is a MMORPG that allows users to create and run their own fashion business.

‘Dissension in the Ranks’

Pro Football Weekly’s Michael Blunda says that you should expect to see big differences in the way we fantasy football “experts” rank the players heading into this season — much more so than usual.

Thursday, May 21

FSTA Hotel Deadline Extended

Those still looking to register for the June FSTA conference in Chicago can now get the discounted hotel rate through Tuesday, May 26.

For ‘Bachelorette’ Fans Who Need More Fantasy …

A pair of writers for The Huffington Post have divvied up the 20 contestants who made it through the first week of the ABC show The Bachelorette among fantasy teams. Fafarazzi.com also offers users a fantasy game to accompany the show.

Wednesday, May 20

What Young Consumers Want

MTV Networks surveyed 12-to-24-year-olds in the United States, Germany, India, Japan and the United Kingdom and found that young adults care most about a product being high-quality and reliable. It’s also important to surround the whole age group with marketing — on TV and online.

NFL Allows Lottery Deals

The league has voted to allow its teams to align with state lotteries. This move may not have any direct link to sports wagering, but it’s certainly worth noting in relation to the NFL’s fight with gambling legalization. Also, it could encourage more states to explore a fantasy-related lottery model like the one practiced in Montana.

Monday, May 18

The Kasparov League

So, if chess is for geeks and fantasy sports are for geeks, what does that make one who plays fantasy chess?

MLBAM Knows Where You Are

MLB Advanced Media has been awarded a federal patent for its MLB.tv geolocation tool, which allows it to determine your exact location to make sure you’re not within your team’s local broadcasting range. Anyone else find this technology mildly unsettling?

Thursday, May 14

Fanball and Co. Move to DirecTV

As part of the recent merger with Liberty Entertainment, DirecTV has assumed control of Fun Technologies — the parent company of Fanball, CDM Sports and Fantasy Cup.

The Line Between Fairness and User Interaction?

The Fantasy Action Sports League has launched a feature that allows competitors in its fantasy surfing contests to submit their own scores within 1 minute following a surfer’s ride. After a minute, the average of all user-submitted scores is compiled and applied. It sounds interesting for surf fans who know (or at least think they know) their stuff. It also sounds like a feature that could be often and possibly easily manipulated. Fortunately, it probably won’t be an issue for mainstream sports, which tend to rely on more concrete stats.

PC for Play

Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown says that “Very rapidly the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world.” Although there’s really no competing console on which to play fantasy sprots, maybe the shift could mean more people (particularly younger people) online looking for things to play.

More Fantasy Cricket

Sports social-networking site tourlegends.com has launched a free Fantasy Cricket application. Still mostly an oddity to American sports fans, cricket seems to be steadily building its online fantasy presence.

Tuesday, May 5

Recession-Proof Gaming

While various other companies are cutting their way through the global economic downturn, Korean online game publishers are enjoying record profits.

Online Advertising Continues to Grow

Good news for us online folks. According to MediaPost, spending on Web display and search advertising grew 12.4 percent in 2008 over the previous year.

Friday, April 24

Fantasy Surf’s Up

If you what the ASP WQS pro surfing tournaments are and have been itching to join a fantasy competition for them, you are finally in luck. Fantasyprosurfing.com launched earlier this week.

Wednesday, April 22

‘The Biggest Sports Site You’ve Never Heard Of’

Forbes.com recently profiled Fantasy Sports Ventures, calling its network a rival to big boys such as ESPN and Fox.

Through the Wickets

SportsPundit.com is in the midst of its first year offering a fantasy cricket contest to accompany the Indian Premier League’s season.

KNBR Enters the Matrix

Fantasy Sports Matrix has partnered with sports talk radio station KNBR to create a social-networking destination for Bay Area sports fans.

Monday, April 20

Safeco Expands Offerings for DS Users

The Nintendo Fan Network, available to Nintendo DS users at Safeco Field in Seattle, is offering expanded coverage this season thanks to a deal with ESPN. The network gives users access to Mariners-related coverage as well as ESPN content, including fantasy content. Such wifi offerings figure to become more the norm in stadiums around the country, if they aren’t already.

Friday, April 17

SB Nation Strikes Deal with NHL

The sports blog community SB Nation has partnered with the NHL to provide its coverage to team pages on NHL.com. SB Nation previously reached a deal with Yahoo! to supply its MLB, NFL and NBA blog coverage on Yahoo Sports team pages.

More DirecTV Viewers to Get NBA Channel

The NBA has reached an agreement with DirecTV that will move NBA TV down from the premium programming level to the Choice Xtra package. The change means 9 million more viewers can access the network, according to the SportsBusinessDaily report.

Sunday, April 12

PGATour.com Reports Strong Quarter

The main golf story of the first quarter of 2009 was obviously Tiger Woods’ return to the links, and that’s likely the main reason that PGATour.com enjoyed strong traffic for those three months. For what it’s worth, though, the time also coincided with the first quarter of the site’s partnership with Yahoo’s fantasy golf game.

MotoGP League Revs Up

FantasyRacer.com has launched the first season of its fantasy MotoGP salary-cap game.

MLB App Seems Fit for Fantasy Players

If an application for iPhone and iPod Touch is going to cost $10 (rather than the more typical lower single-digit numbers), it’s going to have to be pretty involved. Judging by this TMCnet review, MLB.com At Bat 2009 certainly seems to be. I think we all know that fantasy baseball players are just the kind of “fanatics” the writer is describing.

Friday, April 3

Fantazzle Adds New Games

Fantazzle this week launched baseball, golf and racing games to go with the football and basketball contests it ran for the first time in 2008.

SN Delivers Baseball App

Sporting News and Zumobi have combined to create an application for iPhone and iPod Touch users that provides detailed SN content, including stats and player news.

Thursday, April 2

Fantasy Sports Channel Gets Resuscitation

OK, that headline might be a little overly dramatic. The fact is that Fantasy CPR will join the lineup on BlogTalkRadio’s Fantasy Sports Channel beginning this Saturday.

Sunday, March 29

MLS Player Gets Kicks with Fantasy Baseball

Unless you’re among the Major League Soccer faithful, you probably don’t know Taylor Twellman. He believes he can hang with you in fantasy baseball, though.

Saturday, March 28

Yahoo to the Pitch

Tonya Antonucci has gone from helping to launch Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Fantasy Sports to guiding the brand new Women’s Professional Soccer.

New Site Tries to Cater to Audience

FantasySmackTalk.com launched what it calls a “customer-driven fantasy sports advice website” earlier this week. The site appears to be heavy on videos, and the founders say they will focus on facilitating direct communication between its “experts” and users.

Draft Analyzer Goes Online

For the first time in its existence, Advanced Sports Media’s Draft Analyzer is available as a Web application (no download). The product has been included in subscriptions to ESPN Insider and Fanball’s premium Owner’s Edge package.

Thursday, March 19

Don’t Let One Day Doom Your Tournament

365fantasysports.com brings the daily fantasy concept to the NCAA tournament, allowing participants to pick new players each day.

Wednesday, March 18

RotoHog Goes South of the Border

Fox Sports has reached a deal with RotoHog to provide a Spanish-language stock market-style baseball games for consumers in Central and South American countries for this MLB season.

Monday, March 16

SportsDirect to Do Fantasy for USA Today

SportsDirect Inc. will power a suite of fantasy games for USA Today beginning this year.

Friday, March 13

Look Out, Folks

Our hold on the phrase “fantasy sports” just might be getting tenuous. Burda: ic has apparently released the second installment of its Fantasy Tennis game title. In this case, “fantasy” refers to an arsenal of “spells” that the players bring with them into matches. Let’s try not to aggravate them, and maybe we can keep from getting wiped out.

NFL Stays with Westwood One

The league rejected bids from ESPN Radio and Sporting News Radio to keep its national coverage on Westwood One for two years at $30 million (plus promotional costs). The NFL has reportedly been there for 29 of the past 31 years.

Wednesday, March 11

RotoHog Gets Financial Boost

The builder of white-label fantasy sports offerings just brought in a $2 million round of funding, led by existing investors Mission Ventures and DFJ Dragon.

Tuesday, March 10

College Fantasy Sites Join Forces

Fantasy College Blitz and College Fantasy Football Insider are teaming up to enhance their presence in the emerging market of fantasy college football. (We here at FSB.com are going to stop short of deeming them “superpowers,” though, as the announcement humbly portrays.)

Monday, March 9

RotoHog Hits the Sand

The AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour will have its new fantasy game operated by RotoHog. The game will be available on the AVP’s new website, which we reported on back in January.

Friday, March 6

Another Site Deals in Celebrities

BuddyTV.com has launched fantasy games centered on “reality” television shows such as American Idol, America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars. The platform is free to play and joins a growing market of celebrity- and television-driven fantasy games.

Fantasy Postseason Gets Into the Madness

Fantasy Postseason, a site launched in September, has opened registration for the inaugural run of its College Basketball Tournament Fantasy Game. For anyone who finds filling out the brackets a little too impersonal, the game offers a free outlet for doing the fantasy thing in March.

Thursday, March 5

FSTA Sets Date for Summer Conference

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has announced that its summer business conference will take place June 18-19 in Chicago. The football drafts will be held the night before, and the final afternoon will again feature a Cubs game.

The Pod’s the Word

eMarketer projects that the segment of the total American Internet audience that consumes podcasts will nearly double in the next five years.

Do Them Proud

Did you go to an Ivy League school? Well, Scott Swanay did, and now he’s been featured in his old school’s newspaper.

Another Outlet for Your Motocross Fix

MotoSport and Vurbmoto have combined to present a fantasy game based on amateur national racing. Amateur Fantasy Racing League 2009 will incorporate five motocross races, starting next week and culminating in the announcement of the winners April 1.

Tuesday, March 3

Fantrax Out of Beta

Fantrax.com, a league-manager site that ranked among the finalists in that category for the FSTA industry awards in January, ended its beta phase today. We’ll have more on the official launch in the coming days.

FSTA Gets a New Look

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association today launched a new, far more attractive website.

Site for Sale

Extreme Fantasy Sports Leagues (EXFSL.com) is up for sale.

Tuesday, February 24

For Those Who Know the Difference …

Yesterday we shared the announcement of the launch of 2009 Australian fantasy rugby via FoxSports.com. Today it’s the AFL (Australian-rules football). I know the two sports are different, but I’d be lying if I said I remembered what the differences are.

Monday, February 23

CBS Adds Auction to Baseball Platform

CBSSports.com announced the availability of its 2009 suite of fantasy baseball products today. Included in the launch is the addition of auction-draft software.

Fanhouse Goes Local

Fanhouse.com has signed with NBC Local to syndicate relevant content on NBC Local sites. It’s the first syndication deal for Fanhouse.

It’s Fantasy Football Without the Pads

If you’re waiting to get your Australian rugby fantasy team going on Fox Sports for 2009, make sure you do so before the season opens on March 13.

Sunday, February 22

Selling a Fantasy Team

This media blogger decides to put together a fantasy ad/pr/marketing team. My only question is this: Which is more unseemly, a team of ad/pr/marketing folks or one of ‘roiding baseball players? I’ll have to favor the salesmen as the good guys in this case, simply because that team includes Kermit the Frog.

Friday, February 20

AL is Making Out

USA Today’s Steve Gardner says that the off-season’s player movement helped AL-only fantasy players more than their NL counterparts.

What’s Your Fantasy Baseball Scoring System of Choice?

ESPN the Magazine’s Rick Paulus wants to know: rotisserie or head-to-head? Did somebody do away with fantasy-point scoring without telling me?

Thursday, February 19

He Caught a Big One

A Kentucky man won the first prize of the year in the FLW Fantasy Fishing game, and another reporter is now aware of the contest.

Who’s Best on Bikes?

Expert drafts abound in baseball and football, but how often can you find out who the experts of motorcycle racing would select? The writers at motorcyclenews.com like these folks.

Grace Us with Your Wisdom

To some (or at least one), SportsJudge.com’s Marc Edelman is the “Solomon of fantasy sports.”

Wednesday, February 18

MMOD Goes HD

If you’re among the working stiffs who starts watching the NCAA men’s basketball tournament online via CBS Sports’ March Madness on Demand, you’ll now be able to get it in high definition.

Tuesday, February 17

Euro Fantasy Coming Down to the End

Apparently Europe’s Champions League (soccer) is coming to its “knockout stage.” I won’t pretend to really understand what that means — or take the time to research it — but I will let you know that some EA Sports video games and other loot are available via ESPN.com’s Soccernet fantasy game.

Monday, February 16

Out of This World Fantasy Insight

Here’s a question: If you were an alien unencumbered by human feelings and biases, how differently might you draft your fantasy baseball team?

Sunday, February 15

Big Three See No Finish Line with NASCAR

No matter how bleak their books get, you can always find the most prominent automakers prominently featuring their products on the NASCAR circuit.

Saturday, February 14

One of These Things Is a Lot Like the Other

Have you ever wondered which football players would serve as the fantasy counterparts to some of the most prominent names in fantasy baseball? Yeah, neither have I, but Mark St. Amant has. Among the comparisons he draws is this gem: “Plaxico Burress = Ugueth Urbina. They both like guns.”

Wednesday, February 11

Get into the Arena

Player Ventures LLC has announced the availability of instantARENA, its “brandable, white-label fantasy sports gaming solution.” The system is built to deliver material for NFL, MLB and NBA game sites that can be branded for existing outlets looking to draw the fantasy crowd. (Update: The platform has now added NHL support and multi-sport capabilities.)

Users Have Their Say Online

eMarketer projects continued growth in the amount of user-generated content on the Web, both by volume and percentage of overall content. That’s not necessarily good news for those making their living via Web content creation.

Tuesday, February 10

What’s an NL-only Owner to Do?

The down economy that has slowed non-Yankees spending in free agency is indirectly impacting NL- and AL-only fantasy baseball players. Do you take a shot on Bobby Abreu on the off-chance that he eventually signs with the Dodgers (or someone else in the league on which you focus)?

MLB Also Brokers Online Deal with ESPN

We shared the news yesterday about MLB teaming with the NHL to offer an online programming package. Baseball has also joined forces with ESPN, offering a $129.99 subscription to MLB.tv that also includes an ESPN Insider membership. Insider provides greater access to ESPN articles and online programming. Such a deal seems to further blur the line between the network and the leagues that it is supposed to cover journalistically, but I guess it’s a line that has been blurry to various degrees for some time now.

Half the UFL Still on the Way

The UFL will debut with four franchises instead of the target of eight, but it’s reportedly still on track to kick off in the fall. Helping with that launch is a recent infusion of $30 million in investor funding.

Monday, February 9

You Name It

Fake Teams is running its fourth annual contest to determine the best fantasy baseball team names. Entries have to be in by Sunday, and you have to register with the site to enter. Past winners include: Itchy Buchholz (2008), Schoenweiss and the Seven Dwarves (2007) and, my favorite, I’m Bill James, Bitch! (2006).

What Else Could You Need Beyond Golf and Fantasy Football?

Scroll down toward the bottom of this PGATour.com interview with Matt Jones and you’ll see that the professional golfer also loves to play fantasy football. He says he’ll never draft the Jaguars receiver who shares his name, though.

Fantrax Starts Its Engines

Fantrax announced today the addition of commissioner NASCAR leagues to its platform that already included baseball, football, basketball and hockey.

Friday, February 6

100 Free Sports Apps

Do you have an iPhone, some time to kill and a hankerin’ for more connectivity with your favorite sports? Well, Mashable has put together a list of 100 free sports applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Thursday, February 5

Need a Gift for the Serious Fantasy Baseball Player in Your Life?

Minor League Baseball Analyst by Deric McKamey purports to combine sabermetrics with traditionally trained scouting to look at more than 1,000 diamond prospects.

‘Fantasy Racing for Dummies’

OnPitRow.com is relaunching a survivor sort of fantasy NASCAR game that had been on hiatus. Players pick a single driver each week and can’t use a driver more than once.

Tuesday, February 3

Open Season

Today officially opened the new year for the BASS Fantasy Fishing game.

Costas Now with MLB Network

Major League Baseball’s cable outlet has finally brought Bob Costas aboard. Of course, that won’t do anything to help the perception of sports bloggers or fantasy on the league’s network.

Give Fantasy Racing a Try

Here’s the story of a fantasy NASCAR convert. (The sport ain’t just for rednecks, y’all.)

Monday, February 2

Play Fantasy Golf for Charity

Pro Tour Fantasy Golf and Portable Golf Solutions have partnered up to allow charitable organizations to present fantasy golf competitions.

Sunday, February 1

Fantasy Sports Ventures Continues Ascent

According to comScore’s numbers, FSV’s Fantasy Players Network enjoyed the Web’s second-largest increase in unique visitors from November to December. The network welcomed 79 percent more such visitors in the final month of 2008.

‘Why Do You Do This? Why Do You Waste Your Time?’

Poochie Bennish answered those questions from his wife by winning the 2008 World Championship of Fantasy Football.

SEM Made Me a Fantasy Winner

This columnist for Search Engine Land says that his training and experience in search-engine marketing helped him defeat his fantasy football competitors.

Get Your Stats Here

CNET’s Don Reisinger spotlights four out-of-the-mainstream Web sources for the stat-obsessed fan: Sports Data Hub, SportsGenie, Sports Reference and StatSheet.

‘Blackberry for Sports’

SoCalTech.com interviews Jose daVeiga, co-founder and CEO of KlickSports. The company operates contests focused on in-game questions for fans to answer.

Who Would Make Your Fantasy NASCAR Hall of Fame?

Roto Times’ Brian Polking will take The Intimidator, Jeff Gordon, Ricky Rudd, Jeff Burton and … Fonty Flock?

Tuesday, January 27

SportingNews.com Trying New Traffic Channels

The most visible effort over the past year has been the creation of the daily e-mail newspaper, Sporting News Today, but the parent company is also stepping up e-mail campaigns and search engine optimization to drive consumers to its site.

Monday, January 26

Fantasy Makes for a Good Pitch

Tough to say for sure whether this is a ranking on Sports Business Journal’s site, but Eric Fisher’s list of digital sports media sectors being pitched to venture capital firms certainly seems to be. Checking in at No. 2 — right behind social media — is fantasy. It’d be nice to know if this is a list of the most popular, the most effective or both, but we know this: Fantasy is a major player these days.

Sunday, January 25

How Do You Do Fantasy Baseball?

Kevin Orris of Fantasy Pros 911 wants to hear your fantasy baseball story.

Saturday, January 24

Bad Economy Impedes Fantasy Racing

Roto Times’ Brian Polking (about as good a last name as a NASCAR writer could hope for) writes that the economic downturn and subsequent strain on sponsorships in NASCAR is making for a tougher season in fantasy auto racing leagues.

Thursday, January 22

Not All Ballplayers Took the Winter Off

KFFL’s Tim Heaney — a 2008 FSWA finalist for Best Baseball Article in Print — rounds up news on players from the Caribbean leagues who are or will be worth the attention of fantasy owners. KFFL also features similar roundups from the Arizona Fall League (AL and NL) and the Hawaiian Winter Baseball league.

The Money’s Going Where?

Professional angler and ESPN Outdoors commentator Kevin Short wonders aloud why there’s a bigger purse on the FLW fantasy fishing contest than on the fishing tour itself.

OneSeason Secures More Funding

The sports stock-market site has nailed down $3.5 million in Series A funding. As part of the new deals, OneSeason has also added new members to its board of directors and advisory board, most notably hall of fame safety Ronnie Lott.

Wednesday, January 21

Fantasy Sports Channel to Go Live from FSTA Conference

Scott Engel and Paul Bourdett of RotoExperts will join Fantasy Sports Channel managing editor Marc Ronick for nine hours of coverage from the FSTA winter business conference’s first day on Tuesday. The programming will stream live on BlogTalkRadio.

Saturday, January 17

Let’s Get Up with the Times

Biz of Baseball founder Maury Brown writes that the Baseball Writers Association of America needs to update its processes and its thinking, especially in these troubled times for the newspaper industry.

Di Fino Hands Out His Awards

The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino figuratively passes out some of the FSTA hardware in advance of the actual events on Jan. 27 an 28.

Friday, January 16

Fans Now Get Their Own House

FanHouse has moved out from under the AOL Sports banner, which is apparently no more.

The Malkmus Interview

Indie rock fans are probably familiar with Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus, but how many of you know him as a serious fantasy hoops player?

All the Way

Fanhouse blogger Shane Bacon says that his keeper-league team went undefeated this year, in spite of LaDainian Tomlinson.

Wednesday, January 14

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Cal Spears has noticed some issues with ballot-stuffing on FantasyTeamNames.net and is imploring users to police themselves.

Hey, You’re on My Fantasy Team

His occupation as a Utah Jazz beat writer and preoccupation with fantasy basketball can meet somewhat awkwardly for Jim Burton of the (Ogden, Utah) Standard-Examiner. It does seem to have helped him connect with Jazz center Mehmet Okur, though.

Hey, You’re Not on My Fantasy Team

Jan Hubbard of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tells of the long-time Larry Bird League set up to follow the Celtics great’s player rating system. Hubbard also learned that if you’re going to trade Bird in his namesake league, you should at least keep it a secret from him.

Monday, January 12

Happy Birthday, Spreadsheet

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first spreadsheet program. Although this PCMag.com writer points out the downside of its use, where would fantasy players and prognosticators be without it? Probably at the pencil sharpener a lot more often.

Research Says Gamers are Engaged

A study sponsored by Major League Gaming says that serious video game players show product engagement and brand recognition similar to those of fantasy players.

SBJ Sports Business Awards

Interested parties have until Friday at midnight to nominate candidates for Sports Business Journal’s second annual Sports Business Awards. Among the categories that could be of particular interest to those in our industry are Sports Media, Digital Sports Media and Sports Technology.

Thursday, January 8

Rallypoint, Samsung Combine on HDTV Widget

Rallypoint announced a deal with Samsung on Thursday, whereby it will produce a fantasy sports widget for the 2009 line of Samsung HDTV’s.

Money Available in Basketball?

Sports Business Daily reported that December was the best sales month in the history of the NBA Store in New York City, including the online outlet NBAStore.com. Could this mean that money awaits in the NBA fantasy market, which has been tapped into nowhere near as deeply as football and baseball?

Fantasy Golf Gets Into Swing

With the Mercedes Benz Championship teeing off the 2009 PGA season, Golfweek has added four staffers to its group of Fantasy Aces that is now seven strong.

It Can be a Long Season

Before finally coming out on top in ESPN’s Gridiron Challenge, David Wegner of Alexandria, Minn., started to feel the pressure of the fight to get there.

Wednesday, January 7

Buying Fake Stuff for Real

The Hartford Courant profiles PageFad, a company that enables you to create competitve sports teams composed of your online friends. More significantly, though, the article offers a primer on the virtual-goods market, which is still young but reportedly growing.

PFW in Your Pocket

Pro Football Weekly, one of the most respected football publications on the market, is debuting a mobile site this playoff season. Life keeps getting better for the fantasy player on the go.

Professorial Fantasy

How far can we take this fantasy concept? How about putting together your own team of law professors?

Monday, January 5

In Search of Counsel

The Fantasy Sports Counselor is looking to add writers, particularly those with competence outside the mainstream fantasy areas of football and baseball.

Thursday, January 1

Use Fantasy to Draw in Your Consumer

STATS executive vice president Steve Byrd says that companies are beginning to learn how to “leverage their brand and interact with their customers using unique sports content and games.”

Wednesday, December 31

What if You Could Actually Talk Your Smack?

John Hermansen of Global IP Solutions thinks that the fantasy league experience would benefit from the addition of voice over IP capabilities.

Tuesday, December 30

Bike Fans Get Their Fantasy, Too

Not only is there an outlet for you to play fantasy supercross, but you can win an actual race-used bike.

Friday, December 26

Ideas for Coping with Fantasy Withdrawal

As we all deal with the end of fantasy football season, the Fantasy Football Librarian suggests scouting next year’s rookies during the bowl games. She also is putting together a league in the NFL.com playoff fantasy contest. Guess some of us simply can’t let the season go …

Monday, December 22

FSTA Announces Agenda

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has posted the agenda for its upcoming winter business conference online, including the roster of panel participants.

Want a Fantasy Site?

MonsterDraft.com, which launched in April 2006 and is part of the Fantasy Players Network, is up for sale.

No Surprise: Fantasy on the Rise

The Game On! guys at USAToday.com report that Nielsen says the 11.6 million unique visitors that sought fantasy content over the past year could double over the next five years.

Saturday, December 20

Get Your Kicks

Soccer Lens ranks its top five fantasy “football” (European division) providers for 2008. ESPN makes the cut, while the rest reside across the pond.

Thursday, December 18

Driving Under the Influence?

Whereas home runs have dipped in baseball since drug testing tightened, it’s tough to imagine much of a change in performance by NASCAR drivers because of stricter drug screening. Starting in the 2009, 12 to 14 drivers are expected to be tested randomly every race weekend.

Wednesday, December 17

Express Lane to Knowledge

The Fantasy Man wants his new site, FantasyPlayersExpress.com, to serve as a fantasy player social network and repository for fantasy-related information and analysis.

New Stock Game Opens Up the Market

kaChing seeks to use open-source principles and social networking to allow users to follow the investment practices of more accomplished users. It’s fantasy expertise for the stock-trading players.

Keep on Playing

Anyone who’s not ready for fantasy football season to come to a close just yet can start a playoff league on MyFantasyLeague.com for free.

Tuesday, December 16

Who Cares Who’s Coaching?

ESPN’s Eric Karabell says coaching changes don’t alter fantasy fortunes, at least in basketball.

Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Reach Keeps Growing

Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network reached 10 million unique visitors in November, according to a recently released report by Nielsen. That placed the network of 350 sports sites sixth among online sports properties for the month and kept up a tremendous growth rate that far outpaces the rest of the top 10.

RotoExperts Acquires Software Developer

RotoExperts announced Tuesday that it has purchased Diamond Draft Software, a 7-year-old company centered on fantasy baseball drafting software. RotoExperts will rebrand its current draft software, Xpert’s Edge, to carry the Diamond Draft name and will continue to serve current Diamond Draft subscribers.

Rewind the NFL Action

Fantasy players who want to get deeper into scouting Maurice Jones-Drew’s new life as a receiver, look back over Joe Flacco’s throwing motion to project what will come in his second season or simply relish Andre Johnson’s 200-yard day can pay $20 to be able to play back the whole season on their computers. If you just want a particular week, you can get that for $5.

Arena League Benched for a Year

The Arena Football League announced Monday that its board of directors has voted to suspend play for the 2009 season. The move is pending player approval, but many involved with the league have reportedly begun to scramble to secure other employment.

Monday December 15

How Del Grande is Your College Knowledge?

Dave Del Grande is hosting his own college-bowl competition. Although he refers to it as “fantasy,” it looks more like a pick ‘em contest, at least at the outset. Still, though, he’s Dave Del Grande — Mr. Fantasy.

Recession-Proof

Among the predictions made by sports marketing veteran Glenn Horine in this Sports Business Journal column is the following: “Look for an uptick in consumer electronic expenditures as stay-at-home fans enhance the home entertainment experience. Young and old will spend more discretionary time with social media outlets and fantasy sports. It’s affordable, entertaining, and a connection vehicle for friends and family.” Add him to the list of those who think sports to be recession-proof.

Sunday, December 14

Switching Over

The Charlotte Observer has yet another story of women who have embraced the game (fantasy football) that could otherwise alienate them from husbands or boyfriends.

Liberty Media Splits Stock

Liberty Media’s Board of Directors Friday approved a spin-off of its entertainment properties, including 52 percent of DirecTV and 100 percent of Fun Technologies Inc. (owner of Fanball and CDM), into a new stock for trading purposes. Liberty feels that its assets are under-valued and breaking them apart will demonstrate the value to the market. The new combined entity will continue to be the obligor for $2 billion in debt accumulated by Liberty Media and associated with these entities.

Saturday, December 13

Fantasy Sports Ventures Dives into College Basketball

Bob Knight and Billy Packer will be featured on a new website by Fantasy Sports Ventures, set to launch in mid-February. In addition to content, the site will reportedly feature a bracket game.

Fantasy Sports Live Likes Competition

One of the founders of Fantasy Sports Live believes that the entry of bigger-budget players into the daily/weekly fantasy genre can actually help FSL look even better. Specifically, the blogger says the latest “imitation” — see if you can guess what the new game is — falls short.

Friday, December 12

Gifts for the Fantasy Player

Jim Nguyen of Fantasy Sports 2.0 has some ideas for the fantasy geek on your holiday shopping list.

Thursday, December 11

Fantasy Fishing Grows Prize Pool

FLW Fantasy Fishing is increasing its total award purse from $7.3 million to $10 million in the second year of its game. The competition is also adding a couple of multimillion-dollar “exacta” prizes that will go to any contestants who can correctly predict a series of top finishers in two select tournaments. The top prize for the season will still be $1 million.

Looking for Money

As colleges and universities look for additional fund-raising opportunities amid a stumbling economy, one panel at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on Wednesday discussed the possibility of revenue-producing fantasy leagues. (Scroll down.) Knight Commission executive director Amy Perko stuck to her stance that fantasy has no business being in college. Nothing new appears to have come from the debate, but it’s interesting that such discussion is even going on.

Wednesday, December 10

Holidays Keep Coming Earlier

FanSoft Media expects to release the 2009 version of its FanDraft baseball product in December — ahead of its usual January release.

NHL Troubled by Economy

The global economic downturn could impact the National Hockey League more heavily than other major American sports leagues, largely because of the lack of a solid television contract and the weakness of the Canadian dollar.

Roto Golfing

This columnist in California has found fantasy golf lacking and wants to play with rotisserie scoring.

Kokomo, That’s Where We Want to Go

Trying to figure out where everyone in your league should gather for your draft next year? How about Aruba?

Tuesday, December 9

Giving a Reason to Click

eROI offers a look at how it developed content e-mails for CBSSports.com (free download) and how important such a tool can be.

Sherpa Cuts His Own Path

Once you get past a couple of other folks in far less interesting industries, this New York Post story tells a bit about how Scott Swanay rebounded from two corporate merger-driven layoffs to develop his Fantasy Sherpa sites (baseball and football to date, with basketball and hockey in the works).

Monday, December 8

Baseball Digest Coming Online

Baseball Digest, which touts itself as “the oldest continuously published baseball magazine” in the country, is finally making its way to the Internet. The site is set for a March 1 launch. Excited readers of the magazine can head to the already established domain to sign up for an RSS or e-mail feed.

Survey Finds Web Users Increasingly Confident in Skills

A study by the Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California found that 78 percent of Internet users consider their online skills to be “good” or “excellent.” That is way up from 44 percent the last time the study was done, in 2000. More savvy surfers should make it easier for online advertisers to execute their campaigns and enhance the likelihood that smaller sites with quality content but little name recognition will find an audience.

Friday, December 5

Ranking the Rankings — a Preview

The Fantasy Football Librarian is taking an early peek at the accuracy of fantasy football site player rankings as part of her accuracy award project (in conjunction with the FSTA). The Fifth Down blog post gets into the top early performers in the running back category, but she promises to go deeper in her regular blog.

Thursday, December 4

Watching Football at a Bar Comes with Rules

Esquire columnist Peter Schrager says to shut up about your fantasy teams (and other things) if you’re watching football in public. Lower in the column, Darren Rovell says the tough economy is rendering all football players virtually unmarketable and threatening to wipe out lavish Super Bowl-week parties. The horror.

Wednesday, December 3

What Should You Pick Up in Fantasy Downtime

You know it’s coming. The gap between the end of football season and the beginning of baseball presents a lull for many a fantasy player. The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino offers some ways to feed your fantasy hunger before Mike Hampton’s next failed comeback. There are plenty of intriguing options, but I feel compelled to say don’t overlook the “spending time with your family” plan. They miss you.

Fantasy Hoops Reaches the Middle East

Meet Yossi Tamari, an Israeli software engineer who can’t get enough fantasy NBA.

Monday, December 1

Fantasy Sports Still New to India

This view of fantasy sports in India is pretty superficial, but it’s still interesting to read about the status our games carry in other countries and what matters to foreign consumers. For instance, NFL football is mentioned among the available fantasy sports, but only after cricket, soccer and Formula One racing.

Fantasy Farming

Just click here to learn about the Fantasy Farming Beef League. Yeah, seriously.

Man, That’s Just Stupid

The Fantasy Sports Forum blog rounds up and rates some of the stupidest actions among current NFL players.

On ESPN, ‘Monday Night’ Lasts All Day

As Houston prepares for the Texans to make their first even Monday Night Football appearance, the Houston Chronicle breaks down the multi-platform approach that ESPN now applies to the final NFL game of the week.

Monday, November 24

Being a Fantasy Writer

This somewhat lengthy Q&A with Sportsnet.ca fantasy hockey writer Chris Nichols touches on topics that could apply to writers of any sport.

Meet Boris Silver

Most college students are merely trying to gather the skills and knowledge that will one day lead to professional success. Boris Silver developed Sport Interactiva, a purveyor of sports-related Facebook applications, and recently sold it to Citizen Sports. Wonder what he’ll do after he graduates.

Saturday, November 22

No Fantasy on MLB Net

When Major League Baseball’s 24-hour television network launches on Jan. 1, it will include no regular fantasy content.

Don’t Forget the Guy Who Calls the Plays

In a guest turn for USA Today, Sports Data Hub’s Kevin Goodfellow tells fantasy football players to pay attention to the tendencies of certain coaches.

Fantasy in the Field

Fantasy football helps to serve as a distraction, pastime and chance to build camaraderie for many soldiers serving overseas. Making sure that your lineup is up to date, however, can be a bit of a challenge.

Friday, November 21

Missing a Friend

Even if you’ve never heard of Tom Borrelli before, this is a touching tribute to the former Buffalo News writer who died at 51 this week after a fall left him paralyzed. Among his duties at the News was a regular fantasy column.

Thursday, November 20

If You Can Join ‘Em, Beat ‘Em

Canadian Tricia Jonker might be representative of a growing number of female fantasy players, who are joining and beating their male counterparts. The Toronto Globe and Mail even found our own Jeff Thomas for a quote.

Yahoo Fantasy Show Leads the Way

According to Yahoo, it’s “Fantasy Football Live” is the most-watched live show on the Web, getting streamed as many as 250,000 times a week.

Fun with Government

The Obama administration has already begun tapping Cabinet members, so you’re running out of time to show off your predictive ability in the Fantasy Cabinet competition.

Wednesday, November 19

Here to Serve

Here’s a look at how Open Sports is being powered. I’d explain more about it, but I don’t know what the heck any of it means.

Manage Your Real Fantasy Anger

Author Drew Magary offers four outlets to help control the anger induced by fantasy sports. I’m a regular practitioner of the being-surly-at-work method.

Monday, November 17

Driving Revenue Through the Wickets

Live Current Media is reporting record third-quarter earnings for this year, and its cricket-related ventures seem to be prominently involved. Though the sport remains a bit of an oddity to most Americans, cricket enjoys a tremendous international presence.

Fantasy Winnings Put Food on the Table

Your championship pot is not long for your bank account.

Sunday, November 16

New Fantasy iPhone App

November seems like an odd team to release a fantasy football product, but iLove Fantasy Football ‘08 is now out for iPhone and iPod Touch users. The application is powered by Fandora’s Box, The Sports Xchange and PA SportsTicker.

Fantasy, It’s Big

Blogger Jon Haber offers another view of the burgeoning fantasy sports industry. So does Sarah Talalay of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. (Although, the annual growth rate is misidentified in the second. It should be about 25 percent a year over the past five years, as we’ve reported here before.)

Fantasy in India

Latha Iyer sees potential for fantasy sports and sports-themed social networking in India. That’s why she founded Presino.

Thursday, November 13

Tips for Racing Success

It’s never too early to start seeking out advice for your 2009 F1 racing fantasy squad.

MLB Network Adds to Roster

Major League Baseball’s official network, set to launch with the dawn of 2009, has added former major leaguers Harold Reynolds and Al Leiter as analysts and Trenni Kusnierek and Hazel Mae as reporters.

Wednesday, November 12

The Future of Fantasy

CNBC’s Darren Rovell has turned his sports business blog over to a guest host while on vacation, and the guest recently chatted with RotoHog CEO Kelly Perdew about the future of fantasy sports.

What’s Wrong with Fantasy High School Sports?

Two years after his newspaper met controversy with its foray into fantasy prep sports, this columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette News still sees no issue with the fantasy high school game.

Tuesday, November 11

Boss on the iPhone

BaseballBoss.com is now offering its game via the iPhone. The online competition uses virtual baseball cards to simulate baseball games.

NBA Teams Could be More Social

Sports business blogger Jason Peck says he’s surprised to find just four NBA teams on Twitter.

Home Boys vs. Fantasy Joy

This Staten Island Advance columnist makes a case for rooting against your favorite real team if enough money is on the line in your fantasy league. I can’t get behind the idea, though, although we all know the pangs that come with watching your team shut down your quarterback.

Friday, November 7

Just for Kicks

Sure, you might control whether Deron Williams or Orlando Hudson starts for your made-up team that’s named after your dog, but a bunch of soccer fans own and run their own British “football” club.

Silver is Gold

We’re all sports and/or stats geeks here, and Nate Silver just might be our king.

Thursday, November 6

PASPN.net Gets Play in Journal

Ngozika Nwaneri’s unique fantasy GM basketball game gets the focus of The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino this week.

Wednesday, November 5

Obama Promises to Improve Fantasy Football

Among his first stated goals as president-elect, Barack Obama has vowed to hold fantasy football sites more accountable for their poor predictions.

Tuesday, November 4

Devil of a Fantasy Issue

It’s not exactly Tom Brady tearing up his knee in Week 1, but the expected monthslong absence of New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur could be quite impactful for fantasy hockey players. Both of them. (Sorry.)

Monday, November 3

More Bad News for Online Ad Market

The online forecasting team at J.P. Morgan has lowered expectations for online advertising for the second time in two months. The struggling economy was blamed, but the team emphasized that this could be the last downgrade for a while.

Sunday, November 2

The Endorsement That Matters

After long months of consideration, Fantasy Baseball Dugout has thrown its considerable political weight behind Barack Obama. I had no radar gun trained on Obama’s ceremonial first pitch from the accompanying pitcher, but it’s apparent from the southpaw’s motion that he throws harder than Jamie Moyer.

Fantasy Helps the NFL

Football season tends to bring out the old, stodgy contingent of newspaper sports columnists who love to say that fantasy is killing football because this 23-year-old guy they know roots for both Tony Romo and Plaxico Burress on a given Sunday. Appalling! Fortunately, this columnist for the Eagle Tribune gets it.

Friday, October 31

Sports Video Analysis for the Masses

Match Analysis Inc. wants to take the sports video service it has been selling to teams for analytical purposes and market it for public consumption. Our own Jeff Thomas believes the company could find a market.

Fantasy Football Revival

The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino applies the tools available via Accuscore and Sports Data Hub in hopes of resuscitating a 1-7, last-place fantasy football team.

Thursday, October 30

Buy a Share of a Pro Team

iTeam Sports purports to offer fans a chance to buy stakes in various professional sports teams, using a system similar to how one becomse a shareholder in a large corporation.

Senators Call for NFL Programming Changes

Thirteen U.S. senators have sent a letter to the league, criticizing its restriction of a slate of games on NFL Network. The current plan is to simulcast the weekly NFL Network games — which begin Thursday, Nov. 6 — on network television in the home markets of the teams involved. The senate letter calls for an extension to the national audience, as the NFL did with the Week 17 Giants-Patriots meeting last year.

NBA Online Package Now Separately Available

The league announced Wednesday that it will now offer the online component of the NBA League Pass programming package as a standalone product. The plan ($84.95 for the season), which provides broadcasts of out-of-market games, was previously only available as part of the League Pass television package.

Distance Running, the Way it Should be Enjoyed

Toyota and the New York City Marathon have teamed up to offer a fantasy contest that will give winners a chance at a free Prius. All you have to do is correctly predict the top three finishers from the men’s and women’s fields … among the thousands of entrants. Fortunately, the site boils it down to 10 athletes in each group. For those of us who believe a sport should not be derived from an activity that coaches in other sports use as punishment, this is the only way to participate in distance running.

Wednesday, October 29

Fantasizing the Election

One Associated Press sports writer tells about how he and a group of friends/colleagues have turned the upcoming election into a fantasy competition, complete with auction draft. Of course, seeing as how at least one participant is a sports writer, the prize is free food.

Tuesday, October 28

SN Baseball Guide Wants You

Sporting News is looking for reader questions to be included in next season’s fantasy baseball yearbook. Submissions should be made within the next month, as the guide goes to press in early December. Those whose questions are chosen will be mailed a free copy … and get their question answered in pring by the SN fantasy folks.

Subtracting Ad Networks

The number of online ad networks has skyrocketed over the past few years, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the economy’s downturn is expected to thin the market. Be careful about who you choose to handle your site’s advertising.

Dime Sports Offers Midseason Game

The site is taking registrations until next Tuesday (Nov. 2) for its $29.99 midseason salary cap game with a $10,000 top prize.

Monday, October 27

FSTA Award Nominations Open

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association is now taking nominations for its slate of annual industry awards. Nominations must be submitted by Nov. 21, and voting will take place from Dec. 10 to the end of the year. Winners will be announced at the winter business conference on January 27-28. Nominees/winners must be members of the association.

Online Advertising Could Stay Strong

While acknowledging plenty of negative forecasts and conceding that its numbers could trend high in light of the economic changes since the studies, eMarketer projects that online ad sales will continue to grow at strong rates for this year and next.

A Ranking Canadian

KFFL’s Bryce McRae introduces himself as the site’s newest managing editor.

College Fantasy Still Up for NCAA Debate

Although it doesn’t appear that anything new came up, the NCAA’s Knight Commission continued to discuss the impact of fantasy college football Monday, particularly in relation to the question of whether to pay players at all. Of course, everyone involved still seems to be confused about what athletes are actually entitled for their inclusion in fantasy games. Will the Steelers’ Mewelde Moore see a dime for becoming one of the hottest waiver-wire picksup of this NFL season? Nope.

How Do You Stack Up?

Real Time Sports has begun posting a set of National Fantasy Football Rankings, combining the number of leagues in which users participate and their performance to figure out who’s faring best among RTS fantasy players. The current leader “Troy R.” sits in first place in eight leagues and second in seven others. Not bad.

Saturday, October 25

Lions Fans Won’t See Team Locally

For the first time since the team moved to Ford Field in 2002, Detroit Lions fans within the local market will not be able to see their team on TV this weekend. The team failed to get an extension from the league to sell 5,000 remaining seats for Sunday’s matchup with Washington to avoid the blackout.

Friday, October 24

B2B Marketers Spend in Familiar Ways

Everyone claims interest in the new attractions of social media and Web 2.0, but 60 percent of business-to-business marketers still say they prefer more traditional methods in their actual practice, according to a survey by Forrester Research.

Nielsen Moves Toward Online Accreditation

Nielsen Online announced that is has completed a Media Rating Council audit, which reportedly is a significant step in its race with comScore to become the first accredited service for Web audience ratings.

Fantasy Football Parlay

BetAmerica.com is tying fantasy football into a new contest by having bettors select individual players in a parlay format with winning teams.

Thursday, October 23

Bust Pitchers Around

Fantasy baseball players who drafted one of these 20 pitchers probably don’t have to be told that they were among the year’s biggest busts.

Online Community Growing Steadily

According to eMarketer, 63.4 percent of Americans use the internet at least once per month. That’s up from 62 percent last year and due to hit 70 percent around 2014. Graphs within the article show different estimates from other companies.

Democratic Fantasy Football

According to Rick Reilly, Barack Obama knew a thing or two about picking fantasy players for Week 6.

Tuesday, October 21

Yahoo Expected to Cut Thousands of Ad Jobs

The downturn in online display ad sales is leading industry analysts to project that Yahoo will have to cut 12,000 jobs, probably in the ad sales department.

Monday, October 20

Play Free on MFL the Rest of the Way

Anyone who wants to start a football league at MyFantasyLeague.com now that the season is nearly half over won’t have to pay.

Younger Adults Not Watching As Much TV

Anyone worried about their ad sales because of the post below this one can take heart in the fact that 18-to-29-year-olds are watching TV less often than the older age groups. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that just 58 percent of respondents to their study within that age group say they watch TV almost every day. Compare that with 72 percent of people in the 30-49 age bracket, 80 percent of those ages 50 to 64 and 89 percent of folks 65 or older, and it becomes apparent that advertisers seeking the young crowd need to look online pretty seriously.

Economic Downturn Could Deflate Web 2.0 Bubble

Advertising executives warn than the slowing global economy could negatively impact the new generation of Web startups that have been anticipating ad support, particularly limiting free site features or turning them into pay services.

NFL Labor Issues Continue to Linger

SI.com’s Peter King sees signs of collective bargaining trouble in the new contract the Cowboys gave WR Roy Williams over the weekend, which is only the latest example of worry over the NFL’s labor situation. Any stoppage in play in 2011 (or any other year) would quite likely have an enormous and potentially lengthy impact on the fantasy industry, which counts football as its overwhelming leader.

Fantasy Sports Ventures Gets Traffic Boost

Fantasy Sports Ventures ranked fourth in September among comScore’s top 10 gainers by percentage change in unique visitors over August. FSV reportedly saw a 48 percent increase in unique visitors to its site, ranking behind only Technorati, ABC.com and ManiaTV.com in comScore’s list.

Saturday, October 18

Fanball Brings Basketball to iPhone

Fanball.com Fantasy Basketball Draft 2008 says its the first such basketball application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. The application includes cheat sheets, allows users to track opposing teams in the draft and provides player information and analysis via Fanball-owned Owner’s Edge. The app costs $1.99.

Friday, October 17

Fantasy Football As a Teaching Tool

The math department of one Massachusetts high school uses fantasy football to reach a section of students who could otherwise be especially tough to reach.

Thursday, October 16

A Fantasy Life

Paul Bruno, Canada’s “The Stats Man,” is living the dream that I think we all probably carried with us into the fantasy sports industry.

Impossible to Marginalize Bloggers at This Point

A recent study by Technorati finds that blogs are increasingly adapting into the mainstream of media coverage, while more traditional mainstream sources are increasing their blog profiles. Although the eMarketer article makes no specific mention of sports, I think we all know that this is a primary zone for such phenomena.

iPhone Going Strong

iPhone sales continue to increase despite recent new product releases meant to challenge the Apple product. That should be good news for those fantasy companies developing and releasing iPhone applications.

The New Era of Sports Marketing

The Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit will take place in New York City this weekend. Here’s a video summary of the event. Registered members of the sports marketing group include our own Jeff Thomas, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, and chairman Rick Wolf (NBC Sports/Rotoworld) and president Greg Ambrosius (Krause Publications) of the Fantasy Sports Association.

Wednesday, October 15

College Football Folks Get an iPhone App

Fandora’s Box announced today the release of “iLove College Football 2008,” an application designed to help customers track scores and stats every Saturday via their iPhone or iPod Touch. The service is also supported by PA SportsTicker and The Sports Xchange, and should certainly cater to the growing audience of fantasy college football players.

FF Starters to Stream Radio Show

FantasyFootballStarters.com announced today that it will stream its weekly radio show, “The Red Zone,” live via its website, beginning this week. Surprisingly, the press release doesn’t mention the time or date of the show, but the site says it’s on “Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.”

Online Ad Prices Falling

A report by PubMatic says that third-quarter prices for online display ads were the lowest of the year so far, continuing a downward trend, according to MediaPost. The company’s survey also finds that “Small sites continue to monetize their inventory better than large sites, especially as it relates to advertising networks,” according to PubMatic president Rajeev Goel.

Sports Calendar Packed Right Now

The Chicago Tribune points out that sports fans can select from a veritable buffet of offerings at this time of year — from NFL games to baseball playoffs and the opening of hockey and basketball seasons — and seeks perspective from nine individuals of varying viewpoints.

6 Reasons to Play Fantasy Basketball

Why should you join a fantasy NBA league? This blogger offers six reasons. Of course, the downside is that you have to follow the NBA. (Just kidding … kinda …)

NCAA Graduation Rates Reach Record Level

College athletes are graduating at the highest rate ever and more frequently than their non-athlete classmates, according to a report this week from the NCAA. Of course, I pass this along here because we all know the trend is about to reverse now that fantasy college football is killing amateurism.

Madden Takes a Break

Cris Collinsworth will sit in for John Madden as the color analyst for the Week 7 Sunday night contest between Seattle and Tampa Bay in Tampa. NBC’s Dick Ebersol says he offered Madden the week off as a way of resting his “best player,” saving the no-fly analyst from an extra cross-country bus trip. The Sunday night crew was in Jacksonville for Week 5 and San Diego in Week 6.

Tuesday, October 14

Merton Hanks Not Too Bad at Fantasy

Those of you who thought the former Niners defensive back was little more than a freakishly long neck of silly putty might be surprised to learn that the current league employee is apparently pretty decent at fantasy football. He was among the few who drafted Denver’s Eddie Royal and then turned him and Ryan Grant into LaDainian Tomlinson.

Monday, October 13

Make Sure Your Video Delivers

Mediapost offers three keys to producing and presenting original online video successfully. Included is this helpful metric: “In our experience, the minimum standard for delivery is 97% error-free multimedia performance. Anything less represents a risk of angry or lost customers.”

What’s Going Online?

Sports Business Journal (subscription) takes a broad look at what some of the big boys in online sports are doing to grab a bigger share of the audience these days, as well as the role of advertising and sponsorships.

Economy’s Weak, but Fantasy’s Strong

Amid a wide-ranging chat session with seven executives from leading online media companies, NBC Sports’ Perkins Miller and the NFL’s Brian Rolapp mention the strength of the fantasy sports market (subscription, scroll down) and discuss some of their focus on growth in that area.

NBA Continues to Build China Presence

The league has reached a deal to help build 12 arenas throughout China, which continues to look like a much hungrier market for professional basketball than the United States is.

Sunday, October 12

A Class by Himself

The first 20-win season of Mike Mussina’s career was good enough to make him the only 2008 enshrinee in the Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame.

Friday, October 10

That’s a Wicked Googly

As we all well know, the second week of October brought with it the India-Australia cricket series. Cricket.com, a fantasy cricket site that promises to soon tailor its game to mobile users and social networks, chose to launch at the same time.

Hockey’s Still Around?

Just kidding. Amid a manifesto on why you should try fantasy hockey, The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino says that the NHL has avoided the path of challenging the rights of fantasy providers and is instead embracing the games. Of course, the NFL and Major League Baseball also offer fantasy games and content through their league websites.

Cool, but Not Fantasy

The new Front Office Manager simulation game from 2k Sports sounds pretty cool, and if I could still make time for video games, I’d probably be buying it. However, although many of the features figure to appeal to baseball fans in the same way that the fantasy game does, it’s not really fantasy baseball.

You Can Reach Me on Facebook

A September study by Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly 60 percent of social media users interact with companies on those sites and that about 85 percent of users have no problem with companies seeking them out via the social medium. “Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media,” Mike Hollywood, director of new media at Cone Inc. — which commissioned the study — said in a statement, according to eMarketer.com. “It isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.”

Thursday, October 9

Playoffs?!? I’m Just Trying to Win a Fantasy Football Game

Phillies’ ace Cole Hamels is just one of many Major League Baseballl players who enjoys playing fantasy football.

Playing Through the TV

Some cable customers in the Kansas City market just got some new interactive features added to their coverage, including the ability to play track some fantasy football through their television.

Wednesday, October 8

Stats Dispute Needs Ultimate Resolution

Lawyer and law professor Marc Edelman, creator of SportsJudge.com, told a gathering of lawyers Tuesday night, “The Supreme Court really needs to hear one of these cases, because we’re going to see a lot more of them.” He was speaking, of course, of the lawsuits between fantasy sports providers and the professional leagues over rights to statistics and player names.

Online Ad Sales Strong in Weak Economy

Despite the well-publicized troubles of our economy, internet advertising grew by 15.2 percent in the first half of this year over the same period in 2007, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Tuesday, October 7

PlayerSearch Fights in Open-Source Battle

Ted Kasten’s PlayerSearch is one of 10 finalists in the BOSS Mashable Challenge for Web developers. The competition challenges developers to build the best application on the Yahoo! Search BOSS application programming interface (API). Anyone can participate in voting, which is slated to end Sunday (Oct. 12). The winner gets $2,000 and a feature article on Mashable.com. The runner-up gets $1,000. Kasten is the founder and CEO of Advanced Sports Media, which also encompasses DraftAnalyzer.com.

Young Men Really Love the Internet

A study commissioned by Break Media found that 70 percent of men age 18 to 34 would rather give up television than the internet and that 26 percent would rather surf the Web than have sex. Of particular interest to potential advertisers could be that nearly half of the respondents in that age range spend at least 22 hours a week online and about the same number have made a purchase after seeing the item in an online ad.

Monday, October 6

MLBAM, Boingo Combine for Playoff Coverage

Major League Baseball Advanced Media and Boingo have reached a deal to carry live footage of some playoff games to mobile customers at select U.S. airports. Boingo customers will be able to buy a four-hour pass which will allow them to watch American League Championship Series games and old contests from the archives.

‘Women Are a Different Story’

Yahoo Sports’ Ashley Russell tells Men’s Fitness about draft-night fights that nearly had to move outside and encourages guys to involve their significant others in fantasy football leagues.

New Ad Formats Not Necessarily Better

A study by Montreal-based iPerceptions found that online consumers respond better to text ads than display, and that those most likely to click through ads are actually the less-affluent Web surfers.

Global Brands Taking Advantage of Social Networks

Top-name brand advertisers are finding new ways to market their products via social networking sites, such as driving consumer conversations about the products. Although many companies within the fantasy sports industry don’t have the wherewithal to approach the market the way that Coca-Cola or UPS do, there it’s certainly possible to derive a lesson or two on marketing your product. Those sites that offer social-networking applications could get an idea of how to approach potential advertisers about the opportunities available.

Whither the NHL?

A pair of Hartford Courant reporters debate the merits and value of the NHL following the opening of the season. Hartford, of course, was once home to the Whalers (who are now the Carolina Hurricanes) and stands as a prime example of the league’s misguided business plans — the swiping of a franchise from its traditional home in an area of the country that actually likes hockey in search of larger coffers and a region that thrives on college football and basketball.

Sunday, October 5

Gas Prices Hurting College Sports

The New York Times reports on the various effects high gas prices are having on collegiate athletics. Budgets are being stretched so thin that there’s concern about some sports having to be eliminated. The most noticeable potential change on the national scene could be increased time between the announcement of playoff tournament brackets and the start of play. Such an alteration would allow schools more time to shop for cheaper flights. If it were to be implemented for the Division I men’s basketball tournament, it could also mean more than three full days for us to fill out our brackets.

Thursday, October 2

New FSTA Newsletter

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has released the first issue of its new newsletter, “FSTA Frontline.”

RotoHog Wants to Take Bartman to a Game

RotoHog has offered Steve Bartman $100,000 to attend a potential Game 5 in the Cubs-Dodgers National League Division Series. For anyone who was living in a cave in 2003, Bartman was the unfortunate Cubs fan who got in the way of leftfielder Moises Alou on a foul ball into the stands. Despite the words about trying to give Bartman his life back, this is obviously no more than a marketing gimmick. Interesting, nonetheless.

How Would the Players Do It?

The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino gives an inside look at the NFL PLAYERS fantasy league that has been mentioned a few times on this site, starting with Maurice Jones-Drew drafting himself first overall. (Good, now he can be as angry about his crappy fantasy season as the rest of us.)

iPhone App Development No Longer a Secret

Apple has decided to drop the nondisclosure agreement it had been requiring for companies developing iPhone applications. Critics of the restriction said it kept developers from communicating to avoid and resolve common issues, so the change should smooth the development process a bit going forward. The move was likely spurred by the recent release of the open-source Google phone. Applications for the iPhone have been popular recently among fantasy football content and league-hosting providers and are sure to continue to play a prominent role in the industry.

Yardbarker Looking Beyond the Yard

Yardbarker, most notably an online gathering of sports blogs, is expanding its reach beyond sports to other areas targeting the 18-34 male demographic. Among the sites set to join the network are Fark.com, FilmDrunk.com, RealTalkNY.com and WithLeather.com. Those last three come as part of a deal with the Uproxx.com network.

Wednesday, October 1

Sports Network Gets Exclusive with NHL

The Sports Network has reached a deal with the National Hockey League to be the exclusive global distributor of a feed delivering stats, information and video direct from NHL teams and arenas. The coverage includes an online show, “The Daily Dose,” produced in conjunction with NHL.com.

OneSeason Opens Its Sportfolios

OneSeason.com launched its virtual day-trading platform for professional athletes and teams today. The site allows you to buy shares in players or teams and then make or lose money based solely on market, i.e. popularity among traders rather than in-game performance. OneSeason.com — like just about every new site launching these days — also touts its social-networking capabilities. Where this outlet seems to differ from existing trade-market contests is that participants invest and can get back real money, rather than trading in virtual dollars and winning prizes for good performance.

Tuesday, September 30

Helmets Come Off Oct. 4

“NFL PLAYERS Helmets Off” debuts Oct. 4 on Fox Sports Net with a recap of the fantasy draft for the public league involving eight NFL players: Brian Brohm, Steven Jackson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Cato June, Jay Feely, Larry Fitzgerald, Will Witherspoon and Tatum Bell. “Helmets Off” is a reality show presented by NFL PLAYERS Inc., the marketing arm of the NFL Players Association.

FFOC Considers Midseason Game

A message from Fantasy Football Open Championship co-founder Stan Misthios posted on the FFOC boards late last week seeks to gauge participant interest in a midseason contest. The proposed game would be open to FFOC participants for a separate entry fee, begin with a new draft, exclude any waiver/free-agent moves and be decided by total points rather than head-to-head records.

TSN Launches Mobile NBA Content

The Sports Network has announced the global availability of NBA content for mobile users via its partnership with Contec. The brandable service with real-time updates joins the list of offerings under the BUZmob heading and could be of particular value in overseas markets. China, specifically, has been a fast-growing NBA market since Yao Ming became a Houston Rocket, and The Sports Network has been building a significant Chinese presence this year.

Monday, September 29

New York Sun Setting

The still-young New York City newspaper is going out of business, but it accomplished enough in its seven-year run to motivate Congressman Anthony Weaver, D-N.Y., saw fit to deliver remarks about it on the House floor earlier this month. Serious football fans might recognize The Sun as one of the many outlets for Football Outsider Michael David Smith, and it hosted guest pieces from other Outsiders as well.

Draft Sharks Shed Old Skin

DraftSharks.com, a fantasy football content site founded in 1999, has just launched a redesigned website, developed by Atomic Design.

A Little Antsy, Huh?

The regular season hasn’t even ended yet — as I type this, the White Sox and Tigers are waiting out a rain delay — but some fantasy baseball folks are already mock drafting for the 2009 season.

STATS Reaches Deal with PGA

The PGA Tour and STATS LLC have announced an agreement that makes the sports information company “an official provider of in-progress hole-by-hole results for all PGA TOUR,Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour events,” according to the press release.

LeagueSafe Goes Banking

Paul Charchian’s still-new service that handles the collection distribution of fantasy league fees has partnered with Bancorp in applying payouts to prepaid Visa cards.

Sunday, September 28

Can You Crush Charch?

Grain Belt Beer is presenting a weekly fantasy contest in which users can try to outdo radio host and Fanball co-founder Paul Charchian. “The Crush Charch Challenge” asks you to select a fantasy lineup each week that will go up against the players chosen by Charchian each week. For each point by which you beat Charchian, you get one entry in the weekly prize drawing and one in the end-of-season drawing. The grand prize for the season will be $2,000.

Face the Former Pros

Open Sports is hosting a contest in which fantasy players pick a team each week to try to beat a different former NFL player. “Tackle the Pros” presents former Eagles QB Rodney Peete in Week 5, former Niners RB Roger Craig in Week 6, Hall of Famer (and Open Sports stakeholder) John Elway in Week 7, former Dolphins receiver O.J. McDuffie in Week 8, future Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk in Week 9, former Rams corner Todd Lyght in Week 10 and former Bengals first-round RB Ki-Jana Carter in Week 11. “Pros” beyond that point have yet to be announced.

We’re Talkin’ Playoffs

As the fantasy sports industry grows ever more saturated, one area that remains largely untapped is the postseason. FantasyPostseason.com, though, makes the playoffs its sole focus.

Too Early to Think About March?

Most Valuable Network Outsider Jeff Freels already has a top 100 for next fantasy baseball season. I’m going to go ahead and guess things will change a bit between now and draft time.

Cubs Field the Best Fantasy Team

FeinSports.com determined that the Cubs led Major League Baseball in rotisserie points heading into the final weekend of the regular season.

The Hockey Experts are Drafting

Dobber Hockey posted the results of its third annual industry experts league draft, which it apparently has changed to a keeper format.

Friday, September 26

What Kind of Dealer Are You?

Baseball Prospectus’ Will Carroll is hosting a contest in which users can propose hypothetical trades for a chance to win a year’s premium BP subscription. The judges will be actual baseball decision makers, so the coolest aspect seems to be having the professionals rating your trading acumen (rather than the actual prize).

But, My Fantasy Team …

The Serious Sports News Network has the real reason that John McCain wants to delay tonight’s debate. Apparently, it has nothing to do with the economy.

More Anti-Fantasy From Knight Commission

College Times interviews Knight Commission executive director Amy Perko about fantasy’s presence in college football. Not to ruin the surprise, but she’s still against it.

Thursday, September 25

Celebripresident Seeks to Elect a Different Kind of Leader

The folks at Celebrifantasy.com will an online “tournament,” beginning Oct. 1, to elect a celebrity as fake president. Celebripresident.com will line up 64 celebrities in mock NCAA brackets, and users will vote their favorites through. It’s a silly idea, to be sure, but a couple of minutes of silly a day can’t hurt, especially in times such as these.

If You Win in Fantasy, So Should Your Spouse

The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino writes this week about fantasy baseball icon Ron Shandler’s rule that all fantasy winnings should be spent on your significant other. As an example, he points to a Long Island couple with plenty of fantasy-funded loot. (My wife and I revel in the $10-entry league in which the champ is required to spend the winnings on beer. I’ve ended each of the first two seasons with a shopping spree.) (As another side note, Philly’s “700 Level” bloggers are not amused.)

Forty Under 40

Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily are taking nominations for the 2009 Forty Under 40 awards, which recognize the top 40 executives in the sports industry who are younger than 40.

Wednesday, September 24

Fantasy, Technology Grow Together

Here’s a mainstream story about how advances in technology are affecting fantasy sports. (Or is it, how a growing fantasy sports market is taking advantage of new technologies?) Either way, the bond is unbreakable.

Marketing to Fantasy Consumers Now a Reality

Here’s an interesting take from someone in marketing on the change in the fantasy landscape and the impact its mainstreaming as had among brand sponsors.

Sporting News Content Coming to Your Phone

Sporting News and go2 Media are collaborating to deliver SN content to mobile phone users. The press release doesn’t mention the service being available only to those on certain networks. Rather, it looks like anyone with a Web-ready phone will be able to visit the site at http://wap.go2sportingnews.com/.

Get to Know Sportgenic

Sportgenic, a “digital media and technology company that is focused on monetizing sports sites” gets profiled by paidcontent.org via the Washington Post’s website. (Or is it the other way around?) Those who were in Chicago for the July Fantasy Sports Trade Association conference might remember Sportsgenic founder Robert Tas from one of the discussion panels.

Tuesday, September 23

Facing Their Weakness

ESPN.com’s fantasy hockey folks each reveal a player who represents their fantasy “Kryptonite,” guys whom they can’t stay away from despite repeated disappointment. (”Kryptonite” seems to be misapplied here, because — if I remember correctly — Superman wasn’t/isn’t drawn to the stuff at all. It’s just his lone weakness. Of course, I’m no comic book expert.)

Value Comes Differently in Fantasy Basketball

ESPN.com’s Adam Madison says that playing time tends to dictate fantasy value more than talent in basketball, which he sees as differentiating it from other sports. I kinda think that situational opportunity is key to a player’s fantasy value in any sport (see Brady Quinn vs. Trent Edwards in football, for example), maybe just manifesting itself a little differently. I honestly don’t play fantasy basketball, though, so I’ll defer to a more authoritative voice on the subject.

The Flow of Sports Video Streams

Adweek takes a look at where how online video streaming is being treated and is effecting sports coverage, specifically what the potential impact might be on television audience size and accompanying revenue. Sports business blogger Jason Peck has sifted through the material to filter out the streaming tendencies of the major leagues (oh, and the NHL and MLS).

Monday, September 22

Killer Startups Features Fantazzle

Fantazzle.com, a fantasy site centering on contests that renew each week, just got featured on KillerStartups.com.

Changing Seasons

Now that we’ve gotten past the fully speculative portion of the NFL calendar and into some actual games, it’s time to turn full-speculation mode toward the winter sports. With that, here’s the first 10-person head-to-head basketball mock draft from the folks at CBS Sports.

K-Rod Set to be Overpriced

Newsday’s Adam Ronis is already warning against overvaluing Angels closer Francisco Rodrigues in your 2009 drafts. K-Rod set the single-season saves record this season (59 as of this posting).

Saturday, September 20

Ryder Cup Available on Your Phone

Golf fans on the go this weekend can watch coverage of the Ryder Cup on their mobile phones. MediaFLO announced its deal Friday to carry NBC’s coverage to customers with AT&T or Verizon mobile service.

Thursday, September 18

ESPN Launches App for TV

The Worldwide Leader has rolled out a fantasy-team tracking application for television to Verizon FiOS customers in select markets. The application allows one to access real-time scores and track the totals for their weekly matchups in ESPN fantasy football leagues.

Social Networks More Popular Than Porn

As a growing number of fantasy sports companies introduce forays into social networking, it’s worth noting that one author’s study of online search tendencies shows that social networks are now sought out more often than pornography.

Fashion Company Aims for Tweens

R. Lilly Tuckerwear Co. has launched FantasyFashionGame.com with the expressed goal of teaching business principles to young girls. The game gives paricipants the opportunity to design stores, select locations, choose products to sell and develop marketing plans. The press release specifically focuses on “Tweens,” the age group right at the end of elementary school and before the teenage years.

Wall Street Refugees Have to Land Somewhere

An employee of a Philadelphia-area venture capital firm is looking to take advantage of the current and approaching layoffs in the troubled financial sector by directing folks to startup businesses. LeaveWallStreetJoinAStartup.com wants to capitalize on the skills honed in Wall Street firms and touts that “startups are more stable than Wall Street (seriously).” Anyone around here know an industry rich with startups … ?

Wednesday, September 17

What the Sponsors are Thinking

From the Sports Sponsorship Symposium currently taking place in New York City, this smattering of video chats with company leaders, as well as seminar summaries and other features, provides a picture of what potential sponsors are looking for in the marketplace right now. Some items also address how the troubled economy is affecting the sponsorship landscape, possibly pushing some companies to seek out more proven integrity before attaching their brand to something.

The Talented Mr. Soap-o

ESPN fantasy face Matthew Berry will have a role in at least a couple of episodes of ABC daytime soap One Life to Live. The “Talented Mr. Roto” says he’ll be playing a jeweler. Just how much of a stretch that is for someone who appraises athletes for a living remains to be seen.

‘Own the Moment’ Ahead of Time

The NFL has announced to its business partners that its marketing theme for 2009 will be “Own the Moment.” The irony in a line centered on immediacy being released in the marketplace a year in advance, I suppose, is open to interpretation. The league can only hope that this season’s Super Bowl provides a moment with a fraction of the impact of David Tyree’s catch in February.

Doing Business with China

Leaders from several Milwaukee-area businesses will accompany the Bucks to China in October, in hopes of developing business relationships. Both the NBA’s plan to play games in the country and yet another example of American businesses extending there should be of interest to anyone looking to grow their fantasy operation beyond U.S. borders.

Tuesday, September 16

Sports Bloggers at the Fore

The BlogWorld Expo will feature sports bloggers at its conference this weekend, including representatives from Yardbarker and NFLGridironGab.com.

We’re Not the Only Ones

Thank goodness someone else can see through the ridiculous Challenger productivity-loss statistics related to fantasy football at the office. Most outlets have just been blindly passing the numbers along.

Some Things to Think About

Joe Marchese of MediaPost.com ponders some questions as he gets ready to emcee this weekend’s OMMA Global online media conference in New York City. Although fantasy is not expressly mentioned, the Web is obviously the primary frontier of our business, and each category represented can easily be linked to fantasy sports.

Fantasy Football Breeds Future Economists?

This post from a public-school teacher (I can only assume, from the context) lays out a case for fantasy football serving as a gateway to business and economic theory for students today. Although I think this article makes an enormous — and fallacious — leap by insinuating that most teens who play fantasy sports are also watching CNBC, the theory of fantasy sports as learning tools seems to be gaining popularity.

Old Topps Gold Cards Not Worth Much

The 1965 set of gold-embossed baseball cards from Topps don’t find much value today, in part because they don’t display the statistics that future fantasy players used for Strat-O-Matic baseball.

More Fantasy for the iPhone

Fandora’s Box adds to the choices of fantasy football applications for your iPhone.

Monday, September 15

FF Nerd Joins Players Network

FantasyFootballNerd.com, which aggregates weekly player projections from various fantasy sites, has joined the Fantasy Players Network. (I thought this had been announced previously, but I couldn’t find an earlier mention.)

Sunday, September 14

Berry Against Women Against Fantasy Sports

The gauntlet has been thrown down. ESPN’s Matthew Berry wants Allison Lodish of recent Women Against Fantasy Sports fame to give fantasy a try. Although Lodish hasn’t mentioned Berry by name on the WAFS site, a blog post from the same day as Berry’s column says she refuses to “try it.” Could this come to fantasy blows?

Saturday, September 13

Happy to Shed the Fantasy

This first-week testimonial for the pleasure of quitting fantasy football comes not just from some columnist but former Texas and Arizona coach John Mackovic. Turns out the old coach gave fantasy a try but got turned away by Chad Johnson. Someone should tell him that nobody by that name plays in the NFL anymore.

Ultimate Football Network Brings Teams Together

UltimateFootballNetwork.com launched this year, providing one site by which users can update all of their fantasy lineups. There are other features as well, but that figures to be the most useful for fantasy players dealing with the bevy of commissioner sites. Here’s a video of founder Jonathan Joseph (unfortunately, not the Bengals corner) describing his site at TechCrunch50.

Friday, September 12

TSN Launches Soccer Mobile Service in China

As part of its growing presence in the Chinese sports market, The Sports Network announced Thursday that it is rolling out a subscriber service that will provide content on the English Premiership soccer league for Chinese mobile users.

Gotta Set Your Lineup

As Hurricane Ike threatens landfall in Texas and delays sporting events, Sports Network fantasy editor Steve Schwartz offers an account of one owner in his league who didn’t even let his team lag when Katrina and Rita ravaged his community.

Wednesday, September 10

New ‘Inside the NFL’ Debuts Tonight

The HBO staple for many years will premier its new incarnation tonight on Showtime at 9 p.m. A story on SmartMoney.com mentions it at the end with the line “Fantasy football aficionados will flock to the first episode of the show on its new network.” I can’t imagine why we would. The show never offered much value to fantasy players in the past, and now the cast is terrible. I guess we’ll see, though.

CBS Sports Online Gamecasts Begin Saturday

This weekend’s Georgia-South Carolina matchup will open a run of 17 SEC football games that CBS Sports will stream live over the Web this season. The company and conference are talking about a deal for basketball season.

Fantasy Trading Adds Private Companies

New venture ExchangeP presented its plan Tuesday to the crowd at TechCrunch50 for a fantasy stock-trading game that deals with privately owned companies. This blog describes the plan and provides comment from a few tech industry experts, including (at least as far as we know) Mark Cuban.

Tuesday, September 9

Fantasy Hockey, Eh?

Now this is more my level if we’re talking fantasy hockey.

Sports Network Goes Mobile

The Sports Network, which provides real-time stats and original content in various sports, has teamed up with Contec Innovations to offer its material globally to mobile phone users.

Ashton Kutcher: Fantasy Football Entrepreneur?

Buried in an L.A. Times account of a day with Ashton Kutcher at TechCrunch50 is a nugget about how his fledgling Web business is planning a foray into fantasy football. If you scroll down to the Q&A portion, you’ll find this A from Kutcher: “We want to take a new slant on that and engage the players of Fantasy Football with a Web series blog information site. We don’t want to compete with function sites. We want to complement them.” Guess we’ll see just what that means.

Fantasy Hockey’s Never Been Stronger

Here’s a response to the column from About.com we linked to the other day on fantasy hockey. This AOL Fanhouse blogger takes the previous writer to task, pointing out why the game is actually easier to play for the non-superfan than it used to be.

Fantasy Sports Officially Going Social

If it seems like there’s been a lot of focus on social networking in recent fantasy-industry developments, you’re not mistaken. The Washington Times takes a look at the trend.

Monday, September 8

The Fantasy Football Librarian

A Colorado TV station profiled Sara Holladay, the Fantasy Football Librarian, whose other identity is an actual librarian at the University of Colorado.

Flipping for Byrd

Viewers of the Packers-Vikings game might have heard the commentators throw out a call to “get Steve Byrd on that.” In case you were wondering what the heck they were talking about, Byrd is an executive vice president with Stats LLC, founding board member of the Fantasy Sports Association and former board member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

Big Money Skewing Soccer

This article from the Yorkshire Evening Post reports that billionaire backers are changing the landscape of the world’s most prominent soccer league, Europe’s Premiership.

Another Site for the Impatient Crowd

DraftMix.com joins the genre of the immediate payout fantasy contest, offering games that are renewable on a daily and weekly basis.

Sunday, September 7

How to Run a Simple Fantasy Hockey League

This writer thinks that fantasy hockey has been overrun by the win-at-all-costs crowd and offers a simple format for fans who just want to have fun. Unfortunately, I’d have to say that I’m in the group mentioned at the end that has no idea who Vernon Fiddler is.

Friday, September 5

Orlando Blogger Likes FSB.com’s Take

Shannon Owens of the Orlando Sentinel posted a link to our story on the racial landscape of fantasy sports, which was spurred by Stephen A. Smith’s mistreatment of the topic. Owens writes the “Sports Celebrity!” blog for the Sentintel.

Fantasy Sports Prophet Pulls 2008 Football Tools

The fantasy draft software company announces on its site that its football product will not be available this season because it is “implementing significant changes to our application.” The parent company, Sports Prophet LLC, was founded in summer 2006.

Women Not Against Fantasy Sports

This Nevada women-only fantasy football league is starting its sixth season. Participants no doubt understand the sport better than the reporter, who hypothetically awarded LaDainian Tomlinson 28 points for a four-touchdown day. (Of course, maybe he knows something I don’t about a plan to let Tomlinson kick extra points this season.)

Fantasy for Those Afraid of Commitment

DailyFantasyAction.com has launched its beta phase, offering fantasy football competition that renews with each week. Users can choose fresh lineups and challenge different people each week, following a salary-cap structure to play for free or money. The difference between this setup and more traditional cap games (such as those at SportsBuff.com) is that point totals don’t carry over throughout the season. The new site also seeks to latch onto the social-media blitz and user-generated content movement by touting connection opportunities among users and posting user-submitted articles.

Thursday, September 4

Kremer Adds Work to Sideline Gig

NBC sideline reporter Andrea Kremer will dictate information during Sunday night broadcasts to a coworker in one of the network trucks for posting in an in-game blog on NBCSports.com and NFL.com this season.

Questioning the Judge

This legal news outlet presents a Q&A with Marc Edelman, a former practicing lawyer and current professor who created SportsJudge.com. The pay site resolves fantasy sports disputes.

Don’t Forget Baseball

With college football season under way and pro football starting up tonight (and basketball and hockey on the horizon, if you’re into those sorts of things), CBS Sports’ Scott White urges you not to lose track of your fantasy baseball team.

‘Chairman of the Board’

The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino profiles the creators of the corrugated fantasy draft board.

Celebrifantasy Targets “FF Widows”

Celebrifantasy.com — which launched its beta version in April, according to the company’s press release — is marketing itself to the wives of those husbands who head into a fantasy bunker come football season. The site offers fantasy leagues that score for celebrity appearances in gossip magazines (just like HollywoodDraft.com).

Palin Furthers Fantasy Hockey Platform

Republican vice presidential hopeful and avowed “hockey mom” Sarah Palin used her Wednesday night speech to try to turn fantasy football devotees to the Northern sport. (I was hopeful

Who Gets Exploitative Rights on College Athletes?

Well what do you know? It turns out an actual journalist reacted the same way I did to the recent L.A. Times op-ed piece by the Knight Commission co-chairs about fantasy college football.

Wednesday, September 3

Should College Athletes Get Paid for Jersey Sales?

CNBC’s Darren Rovell has an interesting point-counterpoint with Chris Olds of the Orlando Sentinel about whether college athletes whose specific jersey numbers are making money for their schools should receive compensation. It may not be directly fantasy-related, but it strikes at the same amateurism issue at the center of the college fantasy sports debate and has been a specific point I’ve raised in writing about said debate.

Sabathia Might Have Pitched a No-Hitter

Apparently the lone hit that Milwaukee pitcher C.C. Sabathia allowed the Pirates on Sunday — an infield bouncer that he couldn’t handle — might still be changed to an error if the Brewers get their way. That would turn the complete game into a no-hitter and potentially make some fantasy baseball points-league players very happy.

Open Sports Gets Behind Elway’s Face

Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway has signed on to be the spokesperson for Open Sports, the new site launched by Sportsline founder Mike Levy. Elway will reportedly participate in several of the site’s contests — including drafting and maintaining a fantasy team (will he pick Brian Griese, Jake Plummer or Jay Cutler?) — and offer predictions throughout the season.

Central Florida Spices Up Its Pressers

A Monday teleconference with Central Florida football coach George O’Leary had to be canceled when it was discovered that the school had mistakenly given reporters the number for a phone-sex line. (See, honey, I told you those charges on the phone bill weren’t my fault.) In related news, UCF postgame media conferences will only be aired after midnight on basic cable going forward.

Tuesday, September 2

They’re Almost Unbearable

I couldn’t help but pass along this link to a Chicago sports blogger who bothered to cobble together a list of the “Top 10 Bears Fantasy Football Contributors.” The Bears will be lucky to collect 10 fantasy points in any given week this year, much less present 10 worthwhile players. I have nine teams heading into the season, and I own exactly one of these guys — Devin Hester.

Weak Beer, Strong NFL Presence

As part of it’s sponsorship deal with the league, Coors Light’s brand will grace a fantasy football widget that will be available this season via NFL.com and the beer’s MySpace page. Unfortunately, there’s been no reported action on the move to change Coors Light’s official designation from “beer” to “carbonated water.”

Bodog Cancels Fantasy Football

The site, which focuses more heavily on sports gaming, says in a message to users that its baseball games will finish out the year but that no football offerings will be available. There’s no specific mention of the future of the games, but it certainly seems like there will be no Bodog fantasy games going forward. The company has been in a bit of trouble lately, particularly over the finances of its founder.

Monday, September 1

Someone Else Finds Stephen A. Smith’s Analysis Lacking

I posted the other day about how the aforementioned posed the question in ESPN the Magazine recently of why more black people don’t play fantasy sports and then failed to answer himself. Uzo Ometu of Sportswatchers, who says he is black and plays fantasy, agrees with my socioeconomic argument.

Sunday, August 31

Alma Mater Football League Keeps You Loyal

If you’re looking for a free fantasy college football game to play this year and are worried that the player pool is far too large to keep track of, you might be looking for AMFL. The game asks you to select a single college team, from which you will choose players to activate each week as you compete against others using the same school.

Fantasy Football Doesn’t Brake for Parties

Unfortunately, this situation is all too common. I think many of us can sympathize. I mean, what is she thinking dragging you to some boring cookout when we’re less than a week from opening day? Trades don’t make themselves.

When Wedded Bliss Spills Over Into Fantasy …

One husband is using his fantasy baseball league’s trade desk to vent his frustration over a tiff with his wife. (Unfortunately, it’s a joke.)

Saturday, August 30

Fantasy Expert by a Different Name

Although he’s described as a fantasy football “consultant,” it doesn’t appear that Nathan Zegura performs duties that are much (if any) different from most others who dole out fantasy advice/analysis for a living. Our own Jeff Thomas gets paraphrased in the article, but — as usual — he must not have said anything worth quoting directly.

Fantasy Football Thrives in MLB Clubhouses

All the losers who play fantasy football are overweight dwellers of their moms’ basements … oh, and well-conditioned professional athletes.

Friday, August 29

Fantasy Baseball’s One-Hit Wonders

Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame takes a look at the most anomalous performances in fantasy history, broken down by category. Surprisingly, Brady Anderson’s famously aided 50-homer season doesn’t top the list in that category by their metric.

Players and Coaches See Benefit to Fantasy Name Game

Texas Tech Coach Mike Leach and some of his players see potential for a positive impact, if anything, from including player names in college fantasy games. Quarterback Graham Harrell — the No. 1 pick in many leagues — goes so far as to say, “I think it’s good for college football as a whole and good for players.”

Thursday, August 28

But Who Are You Really?

The WSJ column below brought to my attention an issue this season in auction drafts on ESPN.com where tricky players were putting Kansas City’s Steven Jackson up for bid and letting lackadaisical leaguemates throw money at him thinking it was the Rams’ beast. (Scroll down to No. 29.) This is the first year in which ESPN’s platform has supported auctions and keepers.

What the Devil is Going on Here?

The Wall Street Journal’s Nando DiFino sat down with the devil this week to discuss his eternal impact on fantasy football. The least surprising revelation: Satan is big on Jeremy Shockey.

NCAA-Fantasy Issue Isn’t Disappearing

This story from the Palm Beach Post updates and delves further into the controversy between the NCAA and CBS Sports over the naming of players in fantasy games. If only this much play were given to issues such as athletes’ academics, improper hirings to lure recruits, the amount of money purged by major college football programs and just which UGa was the best …

Wednesday, August 27

Eight Sports, One League

Ten people will combine eight sports into competition for a single league. The Ultimate League will include football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, NASCAR, college football pick ‘em and a March Madness bracket game. It’s intriguing. Or crazy.

The Gods of Fantasy

That’s not hyperbole to describe a particular expert draft. HolyTaco.com offers advice on how you might go about drafting the various gods fantasy-style. It’s fun.

Obama Evasive on the Draft Issue

As Sen. Barack Obama makes his run for the White House, his fantasy football leaguemates grow weary of his lack of availability for their draft. (Yes, it’s a joke.)

Fantasy Football Brings on the Apocalypse

This ridiculous article from a weekly paper in Michigan does all but say that. It takes such a fatalistic view of our enjoyable pastime that it even quotes one player anonymously, saying that he wanted to protect his identity because of “the severity of his addiction.” Get the hell out of here. Do some people take their fantasy play too far? Sure, but that doesn’t make fantasy football evil. Many people have eating disorders, but I don’t think food is going anywhere. I share this just to expose how extreme anti-fantasy sentiment can be. If it’s supposed to be satirical, it misses its mark.

Philp Jumps to Play Hard

Scott Philp, a former senior vice president with Rotohog, has moved to Play Hard Sports to become its chief marketing officer.

iPhone Fantasy Tools Decent, Not Spectacular

Macworld offers a review of the fantasy football draft tools available for iPhone users. Me, I’ll stick with my list and a pen for now.

More Women Challenging Fantasies of Men

This article from a Colorado paper highlights the increasing number of women playing fantasy sports, including comment from Dr. Kim Beason: “It is definitely a competition format that women stand absolutely equal to men. These women that immerse themselves in it are going to be successful. It is enticing to them.”

Tuesday, August 26

WCOFF Sends Registrants to SportsBuff.com

Anyone who registers to compete in the World Championship of Fantasy Football this season will also receive a free entry to SportsBuff.com’s salary-cap football game. This message-board post from WCOFF co-owner Dustin Ashby outlines the particulars.

Same Old Story Continues to Ring True

It’s the ubiquitous fall story, but it’s why most of us got into the game. Fantasy football brings us together.

How to Lose at Fantasy Football

Here’s an amusing column from ESPN.com’s Gene Wojciechowski about how he has managed to perform terribly in his fantasy leagues. You’ve probably made at least one of his missteps yourself.

Time Warner and Big Ten Network Finally Reach Deal

Time Warner cable customers who have been missing games of their Big Ten alma mater no longer have to worry. The warring factions finally reached a deal to bring the network to Time Warner. Charter Communications — which services much of Wisconsin, including Madison — is also reportedly near agreement with the BTN.

Open Sports Offers Free Commish Promotion

The new sports site that cleverly keeps releasing bits of news to keep its name prominent says its offering free lifetime league-hosting to those who sign up during its current limited-time promotion. Of course, there’s no date listed on the promo for when the deal ends, so it could be like the snack food that never takes “New!” off its package. Nevertheless, it’s another possibility if you’re looking for a league-hosting site.

FantasyCow.com Rings the Bell

It ain’t pretty to look at, but the new site gathers fantasy information from various well-known sources and funnels them through its homepage in a clean, organized fashion, saving users browsing time. Among the other features are forums and a player-ranking system that allows you to drag and drop and save your changes.

Buy and Sell Startups Without the Risk

TradeVibes, a wiki site that focuses on startups, has launched a market-based fantasy game where users get an imaginary $100,000 with which to “purchase” shares of real startup companies.

College Expert Drafts Didn’t Start with CBS Either

FantasyCollegeBlitz.com says this week’s installment — which includes a representative from our own Pro Fantasy Sports — marks the fourth year in a row of its college football expert mock draft. Graham Harrell beat out Tim Tebow for the top spot.

Monday, August 25

Which 10 Wrestlers Could Make You Money?

It turns out the football folks (American and international versions) aren’t the only ones drafting this time of year. PW Torch asks its readers to pick 10 professional wrestlers from any promotion who could put together the biggest money-making tour. I haven’t watched in a while, but when I did, my favorites included Hulk Hogan (before he became “Hollywood”), The Rock, The Undertaker, Goldberg and some of Mikc Foley’s incarnations.

Sports in the Global Times

This report from The Economist is nearly a month old (and somewhat sloppily written at times), but it’s an interesting and comprehensive roundup of the global climate that is increasingly evident in our professional sports. In the fantasy sports industry, we know that the leagues aren’t the only ones trying to reach abroad.

Money and Fame Don’t Make the Web Venture

Valleywag.com presents its list of the four worst athlete-backed internet startups, led by the projected failure of Weplay.com.

The Most Marketable Olympic Faces

CNBC’s Darren Rovell lists the top 25 most marketable athletes from the just-completed Beijing Games. I can’t help but wonder if it’s mere coincidence or good planning that four of the top 10 are swimmers after NBC signed a deal to carry more national and international championships in the sport over the next few years. The focus on swimmers is also worth noting for anyone considering a new fantasy-game target. Jason Lezak — probably the most recognizable swimmer to Americans now other than Michael Phelps and Dara Torres — sits at 25.

10 Most Marketable Sports Names Ever

Rovell also recently shared a reader-enhanced list of the 10 most marketable athlete names ever (note: not necessarily the best names). Those of you seeking celebrity promoters for your fantasy wares without an ESPN-sized budget should note the names of former NFL players Chuck Long and Mack Strong, as well as current Charger Quentin Jammer. They certainly aren’t the biggest names, but recognizable nonetheless.

MLBAM Continues to Advance Its Product

This Wall Street Journal interview with Bob Bowman, president and CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, is nearly two weeks old, but it’s new to me. Although writing about football keeps me on NFL.com for far more time than I spend on MLB.com, I think baseball’s site is inarguably superior. It’s interesting to hear from the head of that arm what MLB will do to stay out in front.

FSB in the mainstream

Tom Borrelli of The Buffalo News saw fit to mention us in his fantasy column for this week.

Thou Shalt Learn These Before Thy Fantasy Draft

In much the same vein as the recently linked 10 unwritten rules of playing in a fantasy league — but featuring some Old Testament language — RealFootball365.com provides the 10 commandments of the live draft. I’ll go ahead and state for the record that I completely disagree with No. 8 “Thou shalt not talk trash about a brethren’s real-life team.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s inbounds whenever you talk to a fan of another team, even if you’re meeting that person for the first time. Of course, it gets a bit annoying when the Falcons fan is just trying to rile everyone up, but … wait, I’ve never met a Falcons fan …

Sunday, August 24

Mortensen Caters to God-Fearing Fantasy Players

ESPN NFL insider Chris Mortensen led a session aimed at fantasy football players in an Arkansas church. According to the article, Mortensen has “a relationship” with some of the staff of the Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers, Ark.

Women Growing Their Fan Presence

This story from an Arkansas paper focuses on a few female Razorbacks fans at a rally for the football team, but it does so as an entry to the growth of the female fan market in sports. The story also mentions FemmeFan.com, a sports site directed at women that now features a fantasy sports section. Although the fantasy market is still dominated by men, this year’s research showed us that the female presence is growing there as well.

Saturday, August 23

Some Find Fantasy Football a Hindrance

This “guest columnist” used a blog post on Pro Football Weekly to air his gripes with the fantasy game that he says he’s done with. I certainly disagree. Frankly, I loved football before I ever played fantasy, and I wouldn’t imagine the same is true for most of us. Every guy’s entitled to his opinion.

Interview with EA Sports

In this interview with the Xbox folks, EA product manager Gerrold Smith describes the video-game giants recent forays into the world of fantasy.

10 Unwritten Rules of Fantasy

We’ve all heard about the “unwritten rules” of various sports — retaliating for a hit batter in baseball, taking a knee rather than piling on points at the end of a football game, etc. Well, Joe Ribando has written out the unwritten rules for participating in a fantasy league, and although he applies them specifically to baseball, I think they can fit fantasy sports in general.