A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– 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.

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

– Sporting News has been working aggressively to minimize the impact on its business of print media’s marginalization.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.

– 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.

RotoExperts announced the acquisition of FantasyAuctioneer.com on Tuesday morning, the first full day of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association winter business conference, a source has told FSB.com.

Fantasy Auctioneer has been online since 2004 and specializes in auction draft hosting, software and contests. The site won the 2005 FSTA award for best new website and took home the plaques for best draft-style contest and specialty product a year later. It’s business partners have included league-hosting sites RealTime Sports and MyFantasyLeague, as well as many content outlets.

The acquisition follows RotoExperts’ December purchase of Diamond Draft and appears to be in line with the company’s stated goal of adding software and services to its fantasy content.

In announcing the Diamond Draft deal, RotoExperts founder Ben Ice said: “Fantasy drafting software has been an interest of our leadership team since the origins of the company. After building a custom application for the NFL season, we decided that it would be most efficient to acquire an existing product heading into the upcoming fantasy baseball season.”

The same logic would seem to apply in acquiring arguably the Web’s best-known auction tool. Why start from scratch when you can align with an established brand?

Look for more from FSB.com as we try to track down more information on the deal.

A while back, Nando Di Fino wrote in The Wall Street Journal about how fantasy could be a key to growing the popularity of professional beach volleyball. Now, the tour just might be one step closer.

On Jan. 22, the Association of Volleyball Professionals — the country’s only pro beach volleyball tour — launched a new website with the help of Digitaria. According to the press release from Digitaria, “fantasy games” will be among the offerings of this new online presence.

The site is being rolled out in pieces, and the fantasy section doesn’t appear to be one of the pieces available at this point. The current lineup beyond the homepage consists of the tour schedule up through late February and a news section.

It’s a shame that the games aren’t yet available, particularly in light of the announcement. AVP events are taking place, and it would seem to be a good chance to try to take advantage of a little publicity. That said, it’s not exactly equivalent to the NFL kicking off in September with no central fantasy operators running. There will be time for interested players to catch on if the AVP can market properly.

Digitaria could offer some more help on that front, as the new volleyball site coincides with the introduction of a new sports division within the digital media company. Digitaria has experience with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Ravens among others.

The site itself is quite attractive and appears to be easy to navigate. We’ll have to see what comes of it as other new features are added. The press release seems to focus on enhancing the experience of the AVP’s fans, but if the new business partners hope to capitalize on the most recent Olympic gold medal for the U.S. women and satisfy a pretty decent list of sponsors — including Bud Light, McDonald’s, Nature Valley and Gatorade — they’ll have to grow that audience.

According to a Compete.com snapshot, site traffic for avp.com hovered around 20,000 at the beginning of last year before spiking to 70,000 in August — when the Olympics were going on. Afterward, things quieted back down.

The pretty Web pages are a start, but attractive, enjoyable fantasy games sure would help a lot more. Just look at what FLW Outdoors was able to do with its fantasy fishing contest last year.