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 Interactive arm of CBS has filed suit against the NFL Players Association, seeking to keep the group from collecting licensing fees from fantasy football hosts.

The suit, filed in federal court in Minneapolis, pursues a judgment that the NFLPA cannot “extract money from CBS Interactive for the use of publicly available football statistics” under federal antitrust guidelines, according to Bloomberg.com’s reading of the file.

“It’s encouraging to see CBS take this step,” says Jeff Thomas, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and founder and CEO of World Sports Technology Inc., which owns this site.

The motion comes just three months after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Major League Baseball Advanced Media in a similar case resolved in favor of fantasy provider CBC, former parent company of CDM Sports.

“As an association, the FSTA worked hard and dedicated significant budget to support the CDM lawsuit,” Thomas says. “Now that the Supreme Court has supported the fact that licensing fees do not have to be paid, the largest fantasy companies are in a position to save seven figures annually. This is a great example of a leading-edge company showing confidence in the court decision and asking others to stop ignoring it.”

(Rick Wolf of Rotoworld/NBC Universal and chairman of the Fantasy Sports Association chose not to comment on the case, citing the NFLPA’s membership in the FSA.)

This latest suit has the potential to alter the apparent calm delivered by the MLBAM case or settle the notion once and for all that stats and player names exist in the public domain. Action between the NFL and fantasy providers has been expected even in light of the decision in the baseball case.

CBS’ move to sue the players association before the group might challenge fantasy hosts in court could be viewed as an attempt to keep any actions on the subject in more favorable judicial circumstances than if the league or NFLPA determined the jurisdiction. The Eighth Circuit, where the CBS suit has been filed, is the same federal district in which courts found in favor of CBC and one that is home to many fantasy sports businesses.

CBS already pays licensing fees to the NFLPA for things such player photos that display on the site, but the body is also still trying to collect for stats and use of names, which were ruled to exist in the public domain in the MLBAM case.

A ruling in favor of CBS here could clarify the rules on what information is freely available for all fantasy providers.

Visit FSB.com often for updates on the suit’s impact on fantasy sports and reaction from those within the industry.