A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– Tricia Jonker has learned that boyfriends will come and go, but love for fantasy football is forever.

– Yahoo says that its “Fantasy Football Live” is the Web’s most-watched live show, garnering as many as 250,000 streams per week.

– 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.

– 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.

– 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 players tend to spend more money, particularly on the products commonly marketed to sports fans, according to a recent study by Ipsos Public Affairs.

The study, commissioned by the Fantasy Sports Association, determined that 73 percent of fantasy sports participants had bought beer within a month of the survey. Compare that number to 47 percent of the general population and even just 52 percent of all sports fans, and you get a good example of the buying power that the average fantasy consumer brings.

“We need to tell Madison Avenue that we’re not just this small, nichey geek audience,” Greg Ambrosius, FSA president and editor of Fantasy Sports Magazine, told Sports Business Journal. “This gives us the next step into really seeing who the fantasy consumer is. In the ’90s, we were often positioned simply as fantasy geeks. But looking at this, we’re really big-time consumers.”

This study supports previous findings in similar studies, including those conducted by Ipsos for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Especially at a time when consumers are increasingly nervous about their spending habits and companies are more cautious with their ad dollars, it helps to realize the kind of bang that can reside in a fantasy buck.

Company: Sideline Software Inc.
Launched: 1994
Site: www.myfantasyleague.com

Research shows that more than half of fantasy players don’t spend anything on their games. With so many free sites out there, why should anyone pay to play?

“To be honest, if you have a simple league with a standard set of rules and you’re looking for a minimal set of options, then you’ll probably be happy with a free league on Yahoo,” says Mike Hall, president of Sideline Software Inc. and owner of MyFantasyLeague.com. “But if your league is ready to graduate to a more complex set of scoring rules, then we have you covered. We focus on offering the most flexible and customizable fantasy football league management system available.”

Beyond the large group of people that simply play fantasy football for fun with their friends, we also know that there is a very large market of more serious players who aren’t afraid to open their wallets for their game. That’s the segment that this subscription-supported company targets.

MyFantasyLeague.com launched 14 years ago as a service that would allow fantasy-league commissioners to enter their league scoring rules and obtain weekly scoring summaries. Actually, it would be more accurate to say just “commissioner,” as Hall points out the MFL catered to a whopping one customer that first year.

Quickly thereafter, though, the site branched out to include full league-management capabilities, and it now touts itself as the most flexible system around. Whereas the free sites tend to limit your options for scoring, roster sizes, drafting and other features, MyFantasyLeague.com prides itself on allowing commissioners extensive control on everything from draft type to waiver settings to the display of the league’s homepage.

“We’ve always emphasized and targeted the hard core commissioners that really want full control of their league in every aspect with maximum flexibility,” Hall tells FSB.com.

Hall concedes that survival in a competitive market hasn’t always been easy, but the company has waded through waters rough and smooth and appears to be in good shape today.

“We’ve definitely experienced the ups and downs of the market forces, but we’ve held pretty steady through it all,” Hall says. “In the 1990s, it was a matter of getting your name out there in a crowded field of options. Then in the early part of this decade, it was a matter of surviving the massive switch in strategy from paid services to free sites. But in the end, after the dot-com flameout, we were able to stay ahead of the game by focusing on a quality, reliable and flexible site.”

The flexibility is extended by an API open to any third-party developers looking to build a tool that can assist MFL users. That avenue has yielded such programs as Lineup Coach and Draft Coach by FantasySharks.com and the MFL Power tools developed by FFToday.com. The Fantasy Sharks tools even led to a partnership between the sites.

“We were so impressed with [Tony Holm's] work that we integrated those tools into our site to make them easily accessible for all owners,” Hall says. “Last year we took it a step further by hiring Tony to continue integrating our two sites.”

The integration has brought Fantasy Sharks content and tools to the My Fantasy League platform, and Holm — founder and publisher of FantasySharks.com — says it adds a “true sense of league management” to his site.

“I’ve always considered My Fantasy League the premier league management service in the industry and also very much like how the company fits in the landscape,” Holm says. “To me, it was a no-brainer to join the team and contribute my experiences to help build the business and hopefully create some unique and useful offerings for the fantasy football community.”

MFL also integrated the fantasy football leagues from StatsWorld into its system for this season, keeping all existing league information and settings intact.

“The StatsWorld acquisition worked out very well for us and for their customers,” Hall says. “We were able to transfer all of their league settings and options directly into our system, so it was as transparent and smooth as possible for their customers to switch over to MyFantasyLeague.com.”

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– Latha Iyer is looking to grab an early share of the fantasy sports market in India with her company, Presino.

– Blogger Jon Haber and Sarah Talalay of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel each take a look at the growing fantasy sports landscape.

– The timing seems a bit odd with just six weeks remaining in the NFL season following this one, but the iLove Fantasy Football ‘08 iPhone and iPod Touch application was recently released, powered by Fandora’s Box, PA SportsTicker and The Sports Xchange.

– MLB Network recently added four more personalities to its roster, including former ballplayers and ESPN analysts Harold Reynolds and Al Leiter. The network debuts on Jan. 1.