A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– 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.

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

– 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).

– 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.)

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TheBigLead.com has the comScore traffic numbers for sports sites in June and reports that Fox Sports and Fanhouse experienced bigger drops than others among the top 10.

Per TBL, Fox — which did still rank third in June behind Yahoo! and ESPN — dropped to 12.57 million unique visitors from 15.1 million in June 2008 and 13.67 million in May 2009.

Fanhouse dipped from fifth in May to sixth in June, going from 9.7 million uniques down to 8.44 million. TBL points out that the site drew 11.01 million unique visitors last December before announcing the additions of prominent sportswriters including Jay Mariotti and Kevin Blackistone to the blogger staff.

Fanhouse also shed the “AOL Sports” flag back in January and relaunched as the company’s primary sports entity. Judging by 2008 numbers, the recent acquisition of MMAFighting.com and the run-up to football season on AOL’s fantasy games site, FleaFlicker.com, could add a couple hundred thousand uniques a month through late summer and fall.

Fox Sports, as well, is likely looking for its recent deal with OPENSports.com to enhance its fantasy products and boost site traffic.

Here’s the June comScore Top 10 in full (numbers include subsidiary sites):

1. Yahoo! Sports — 24.77 million unique visitors (27.14 million in May)

2. ESPN — 20.98 million (20.51 million)

3. Fox Sports — 12.57 million (14.62 million)

4. MLB.com — 11.54 million (12.42 million)

5. Fantasy Sports Ventures — 8.51 million (8.74 million)

6. Fanhouse — 8.44 million (9.7 million)

7. CBS Sports — 6.64 million (7.17 million)

8. NBA.com — 6.24 million (8.25 million)

9. NFL.com — 6.03 million (6.33 million)

10. Sports Illustrated sites — 4.44 million (4.5 million)

Fantasy Sports Ventures has bought a piece of Sports Reference LLC, the company that runs Baseball-Reference.com and other popular sports information sites.

According to the Sports Business Journal report, FSV “paid a low seven-figure sum” for the stake, raising to 15 the number of sites in its Fantasy Players Network in which FSV owns a stake. The network — of which Sports Reference was already part — comprises 370 sites in all. The group of 15 reportedly account for about 25 percent of the network’s total traffic.

“This was a very unique asset where we had the desire and saw an opportunity to get involved at a much deeper level,” said FSV chief executive Chris Russo told SBJ. “We think we can help them grow and continue to build scale. We also hope to use this relationship and build some custom market opportunities for advertisers within the Sports Reference group of sites.”

Sports Reference started in April 2000 with the launch of Baseball-Reference.com by then college math professor Sean Forman. Pro-Football-Reference.com came online in December of that year through the work of fellow math professor Doug Drinen. In April 2004, statistics professor Justin Kubatko launched Basketball-Reference.com, and the three combined under the Sports Reference heading in October of that year.

Two years later, Forman quit teaching to go full time with Sports Reference, which also encompasses Hockey-Reference.com and an Olympics site. Forman told SBJ that the FSV investment will allow the company to go even further.

“We have a number of new areas we’re looking to get into,” Forman said. “We’ve basically been in the big four sports and Olympics, so this investment gives the capital to go pursue that.”

Most significantly, Sports Reference plans to enter the realm of college athletics, a potentially daunting task because of the abundance of teams but also a potential traffic bonanza thanks to the rabidity of college fan bases. The emerging market for fantasy college sports certainly won’t hurt things on that front either.

SBJ reports that Sports Reference’s group of sites already garner about a million unique page views a month, about a tenth of the total unique views for the Fantasy Players Network according to comScore’s December stats.

According to comScore, free online gaming sites tallied 27 percent more unique visitors in December than in the same month in 2007. Those visitors spent 42 percent more time playing their games than the players of December 2007.

Although these numbers reflect sites that provide arcade-type games rather than fantasy contests, the numbers should still be interesting to purveyors of fantasy for several reasons.

1) We should probably assume that the boost for free games was affected heavily by the crumbling economy. Thus, the trend could well continue this year, when more tough times have already been forecast. If these circumstances lead more gamers to seek free outlets, why shouldn’t we expect a similar reaction from fantasy players? Free vs. pay has long been a central issue for both fantasy game suppliers and content providers.

2) Such free platforms rely on advertising and sponsorship to make money. Although the numbers mentioned above would have to look attractive to potential advertisers, there aren’t as many of those ad dollars floating around these days. Is there enough available, and can free fantasy sites attract enough of them to survive?

We’ll have to see what the answers to these questions will be.