Although head-to-head competition already exists in fantasy basketball, Hotbox Sports offers a different take.

The site breaks down the NBA schedule into three-game chunks, with each collection of games representing a single fantasy matchup. Fantasy owners set a regular lineup of positions to be determined by the league but choose just one game within the three-day window for which each player can collect stats.

For example, if Kobe Bryant is playing the Clippers on Tuesday and the Kings on Wednesday, his owners must choose whether to activate him for Tuesday or Wednesday within the Monday-Wednesday matchup window. All settings must be finalized before games start on Monday.

At the end of each three-day period, one team gets a loss and the other a win, based on the total fantasy points accumulated by each lineup.

The site officially launched on Oct. 1 – though it has been online since Sept. 15 — and is powered by Fanball. Co-founder Jeff Ciminera — one of eight founders — tells FSB.com that the company was started in 2005 around the basketball concept, which has a federal patent pending.

The site also provides NBA player news and content from Fanball.com and RotoTimes.com, as well as original content from the site’s creators.

Ciminera says that although basketball is getting things going, the plan is to add hockey next year and then potentially branch out into other sports as well. He sees soccer, in particular, as an area of opportunity because current fantasy leagues within the sport typically focus on one of the major international leagues. Hotbox’s idea is to combine the major leagues into a single player base, which would cater to more casual soccer fans.

“Now you can use all the big players,” Ciminera says, pointing out that stars such as David Beckham and Ronaldinho reside in separate leagues.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– Sports Business Journal offers a broad view of what some of the big players in online sports media are doing with and planning for their coverage, including the role that advertising and sponsorships are playing.

– A Sports Business Journal roundtable discussion of the online sports media marketplace includes reps from the NFL and NBC Sports extolling the value and strength of fantasy sports. (Scroll down.)

– In just the latest sign of the NBA’s increased investment in China, the league has reached a deal to help build 12 arenas across the country. This move was expected in the wake of the NBA’s involvement with the Beijing arena that hosted some Olympic events. The NBA’s actions can only be seen as further acknowledgement of the Chinese hunger for professional basketball.

– Veteran Yankees starter Mike Mussina stands alone as a 2008 Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, following the first 20-win season of his long career.

Company: Fanball
Launched: 1993
Site: www.fanball.com

Back in 1993, there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of fantasy advice on the market. Paul Charchian and Rob Phythian set out to change that.

“There was no information of any kind available once the season started,” Charchian told FSB.com. “We wanted to get something out there.”

Something was Fantasy Football Weekly, which hit Minneapolis newsstands and promptly outsold Sports Illustrated locally. The instant success quickly led an expansion of the business and in 1998, Fanball hit the Internet.

Unfortunately, the growth might have come a bit too quickly, as Fanball ran into serious trouble at the end of the decade and was forced to file for bankruptcy protection in 2000.

“We spent our money too fast, flamed out and filed Chapter 11 like others caught in the dot-com boom,” Phythian told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune back in 2004. “Fortunately, we were saved by some angel investors.”

The group of investors included the original co-founders, and the group scaled down the plan a little bit and brought the company back around.

“There’s a real business here, albeit smaller than everyone else had been hoping for,” then-CEO John Ehlert told the Fantasy Sports Informant in 2002, “and with some resources and dedication to business basics we can grow it steadily rather than astronomically.”

The altered path worked out, and today Fanball.com is a comprehensive fantasy sports site — operating as part of FUN Technologies Inc. — that offers a variety of games and original content in six sports, namely baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf and NASCAR.

“We feel we offer everything possible for both the casual and advanced fantasy consumer,” says Ryan Houston, Fanball’s senior vice president for business development and publisher. “We like to say ‘Play it all at Fanball,’ and that statement is completely accurate.”

Houston touts more than 50 games in the Fanball library, including league commissioner and draft-and-play offerings in each of the four traditional major sports, as well as “challenge games” in each of the six sports mentioned above. That area of the site was enhanced by the 2006 purchase of CDM Sports, which has been running games such as salary-cap contests since 1992, and its integration with Fanball under the umbrella of Fun Technologies.

“We are quite pleased with how quickly CDM was able to consolidate all the Fanball products into one property,” Houston tells FSB. “The strength of CDM was in-game play and development, and that continues today.”

The melding of Fanball and CDM created a single operation in St. Louis with about 50 staffers handling the game applications and churning out the fantasy content. Among the recent developments have been the platform for the Olympics quick-pick game presented by NBC Sports for the Games in August, a fantasy football application for the iPhone that launched at the beginning of the season and an expansion of Owner’s Edge (Fanball’s proprietary service that offers fantasy news, information and advice). The company’s holdings also include TQ Stats, Roto Times and FantasyCup.com, and Houston says that there is interest in adding to the portfolio.

“The recent launch of our first iPhone application and fantasy video segment gives you a glimmer of what our technology group is capable of producing, and we look forward to the challenges, innovation and growth that are ahead,” he says.

“The Other Season,” a competition put on by the creators of NBA 2K9, boasts eight NBA players as fantasy owners and you as their draftee.

Slated to open with the beginning of the NBA regular season, The Other Season pits players against each other in one-on-one video-game basketball matchups online. Players score in the traditional categories: points, assists, rebounds, steals, blocks, fouls and turnovers.

The eight NBAers — Kevin Garnett, Carlos Boozer, Greg Oden, Derrick Rose, Monta Ellis, Steve Nash, Chauncey Billups and Andre Iguodola — will draft teams of the online gamers and compete using the points their gamers rack up.

The winning team will get $10,000 donated to its charity of choice by 2K Sports.