SportingNews.com sent out an e-mail to its users Friday evening to announce that the site will no longer offer fantasy games.

Per the message, which was signed by president/publisher Jeff Price:

“Due to a shift in our core business strategy, SportingNews.com will no longer offer new fantasy games going forward (excluding Strat-O-Matic). The fantasy industry is changing, and we feel it’s best to devote our resources to providing the best fantasy content and advice on the internet, and beyond. We believe SportingNews.com’s fantasy content, tools and advice are already best in class, and over the next few months, we will completely redesign the Fantasy Source section of our site to deliver a new and improved user experience. With this shift in strategy, we will dedicate our entire fantasy staff to building Fantasy Source into the number one destination for fantasy information, accessible via internet, mobile devices, and other new technologies.”

This shift in strategy, of course, comes less than a year after Sporting News announced a multi-sport deal with RotoHog to run its fantasy games. That relationship opened with the 2009 fantasy football season, in which the primary Draft and Trade game struggled mightily.

This decision to change direction in advance of even the first baseball season after the announced deal makes it seem as though any issues in the SN-RotoHog relationship and/or the games platform could not be worked out.

For it’s part, SN.com has partnered with CBS Sports to offer half-priced baseball commissioner leagues on CBS’ site to SN.com users who have been awaiting 2010 launch.

Sporting News has long been a particularly trustworthy source of content both in print and online, and it’s innovation with the e-mailed Sporting News Today newsletter showed that the company is constantly looking for ways to adapt to a changing media climate. We’ll see what impact the absence of fantasy games (and their stream of revenue) will have.

FSB.com will pass along any more pieces of this story as we’re made aware.

Just to head off any jokes before we get too far into this post, “tools” refers to Bloomberg Sports’ new fantasy baseball analytics offerings and is not FSB.com’s judgment of the participants …

We managed to overlook the announcement late last week, but in an interesting marketing twist for its fantasy package, Bloomberg has partnered with Fantasy Sports Ventures to put on the 2010 Bloomberg Challenge.

The “challenge” will be a 12-team “experts” league made up of six industry folks and six consumers. MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds (MLB Advanced Media is a business partner of Bloomberg Sports) will join five fantasy sports analysts with FSV ties:

– Ron Shandler of BaseballHQ.com

– Lawr Michaels of Mastersball.com

– Tim Heaney of KFFL.com

– Steve Gardner of USA Today

– Derek VanRiper of RotoWire.com

As for the remaining six slots, Bloomberg is accepting nominations through the end of the day Wednesday (send to BloombergChallenge@bloombergsports.com), consisting of only a brief paragraph about why you should be included. Bloomberg will select six from that group, and the draft will take place Monday night at 8:30. Those chosen will receive free access to the Bloomberg analytics.

The goal here for Bloomberg is obviously to put the value of their new tools on display by showing that they can enable the average fantasy player to compete at the highest level.

“One of the innovative elements of the Bloomberg Sports analytic tools we have developed is that they give everyone a chance to really excel and have fun in fantasy baseball like never before,” Bloomberg product head Bill Squadron said in the media release. “By matching some of the greats of fantasy baseball against six fans, we will find out how our tools can help regular fans play fantasy baseball like the professionals. We believe that the league will generate a great deal of interest and fun while also demonstrating how different the product we have created is in the marketplace.”

Most of us in the fantasy industry, of course, know that the only thing differentiating the “experts” from many fantasy players is the publishing of their opinions. For that reason, it will be interesting to see if Bloomberg gravitates toward less-experienced consumers for this showcase.

Either way, it’s a fun marketing idea and should be a particularly enjoyable opportunity for the six consumers who are chosen.

Beyond that, it’s also another indication of the seriousness with which Bloomberg is entering the fantasy sports space — which can also be read as a testament to this industry’s continuing growth potential.

Yahoo! Sports announced Monday that it has partnered with MLB Advanced Media to make its commissioner product the “official fantasy baseball game of MLB.com” for 2010.

The deal includes a bit more than one that might make a brand the official underwear of the Chik-Fil-A Bowl. The co-branding agreement positions Yahoo! 2010 baseball as the primary fantasy offering on MLB.com’s fantasy homepage. MLB’s own suite of fantasy games remains, but you won’t find (at least as of Monday afternoon) offerings from past partners such as ESPN or ProTrade.

Aside from the nice-looking “official” tag, partnering with MLB.com provides attractive traffic numbers. Although FSB.com doesn’t have specifics for each company’s subdomains, this quick snapshot of the past year shows MLB.com carrying an audience of about 5 million to 7 million in the buildup to baseball season before jumping to 12 million in April. For comparison’s sake, that represented significantly more unique users per month than (multi-sport) Web heavies ESPN.com and CBSSports.com over the same span.

Beyond the positioning on MLB.com, the partnership also brings to Yahoo! customized player highlights that users can subscribe to for the season for $9.95. The package will offer in-game and post-game highlights of players on your fantasy team and will be available for free preview to Yahoo! fantasy players for the season’s first two weeks.

“We believe this product will exceed fantasy baseball players’ growing appetites for deeper engagement by delivering an immediate, high-quality experience,” MLB.com senior VP of business development Kenny Gersh said in the release.

This marks Yahoo!’s third fantasy partnership with an American professional sporting body. Previous deals made the most-trafficked fantasy outlet the “official” provider of fantasy golf for PGA.com and fantasy hockey for NHL.com.

Bloomberg has garnered plenty of interest for its venture into the baseball analytics market that includes new fantasy products. Intrigued fantasy players, however, should also take a look at a new offering from one of fantasy’s big boys.

Along with the 2010 edition of its fantasy baseball products, CBSSports.com is rolling out in-depth analytical tools — which can be accessed for free on its fantasy news site.

Like in Bloomberg’s case, CBS Sports’ analytics spawned from tools geared toward business analytics. The effort is a collaboration with software company Tableau, which has been around since 2003 and hails itself as the product of combining “an Academy-Award winning professor from the nation’s most prestigious university (Stanford), a savvy business leader with a passion for data, and a brilliant computer scientist.”

CBS and Tableau began talking about the work in mid-2009 and produced some well-received tools for the recently completed NFL season. Of course, we all know that baseball is the game where stat (over?)analysis thrives, so the roll-out for this year’s fantasy baseball campaign sits as the centerpiece.

At the center of that piece is a stat referred to as “RC/27,” which means “runs created per 27 outs.” In plain language, it’s a projection of how many runs a lineup would produce in a single game if a particular player batted in every spot. For example, the rating of National League first basemen that’s sitting on the site as I write this tells me that a lineup of Albert Pujols’ would put up four more runs per game than a whole set of Derrek Lees.

CBSSports.com has tapped “data analyst” Al Melchior to present much of this research and will post new material at least several times a week through baseball season. The data presents other new stats — as well as explanations of their meanings — and the tools within these articles can be customized for different scoring systems and views. The company will also likely look to apply the tools to other sports in the future.

In this highly competitive fantasy games market, it will be interesting to see if CBS’ effort spurs similar undertakings for the other top commissioner engines. At the least, it’s another way for fantasy players to dig deeply into the numbers.