I started to turn this announcement of a new fantasy horse-racing game into a blurb for the FSB News page, but then I realized that it’s really worth more than that.

DerbyDreamer.com, which was launched a week ago by Vinery Farms, isn’t just trying to be a quick, free game to drum up some interest in the “sport of kings” as we move toward the Triple Crown races. Its founder seems to be heading into this venture with his sights set on building the next Fantasy Fishing.

“Tom Simon came up with the idea as a way to draw more people into the industry, and it’s a passion of his, so we’re really doing it for the good of the game,” Tom Ludt, general manager of Vinery, told Bloodhorse.com (referring to a co-worker, I assume). “As you know, our business is losing more and more media and fan attention, so hopefully this is a way to draw in the younger generation and anybody that likes the fantasy games.”

The way this game will seek to draw in that expanded audience is by awarding $10,000 monthly prizes to top scorers and $120,000 to the full-season winner. It’s not the million dollars that FantasyFishing.com blew into town handing out, but six figures is a pretty big deal for winning a “fantasy stable” contest.

Also unlike the fishing example, Derby Dreamer opens as a pay-to-play contest, requiring $12 per entry. Obviously, any entry fee is going to drive away the more casual fantasy set (the majority of the market). Twelve dollars, however, is a low enough fee to entice the kind of player who will put in a little time and effort to vie for the big prize — low enough to get many such players to buy multiple entries.

That money-spending player, of course, is the valuable relative minority in the fantasy space. Among other things, “he” is attractive to potential advertisers and sponsors.

Most importantly, it appears as though the company is behind this concept and willing to give it some time to see if it’ll grow.

“We’d love to get to the point where we’re profitable and can (tie it to a charity), but we’ve got an enormous amount of money invested just to make this happen,” Ludt told Bloodhorse.com. “It will be very interesting what kind of response this gets over the next three or four months. Hopefully it catches.”

Will it? We’ll see. According to the site’s leaderboard, the game has 243 entries so far. Competition opens in the month of March.

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

– Fanhouse has released its own iPhone app, which feeds news, articles, etc. straight to your handset. Throw in a Jay Mariotti dartboard, and I’d be sold.

– “Expert” drafts abound on the Web these days in baseball and football, but you don’t come across too many for fantasy NASCAR. That’s why I pass along to you this writeup on KFFL’s maiden “challenge.”

– FLW Outdoors chairman Irwin Jacobs — founder of FantasyFishing.com — was inducted into the bass fishing hall of fame on Tuesday. The hall, centered in Hot Springs, Ark., has been around since 1999.

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FantasyFishing.com gained immediate notice back in 2008 by offering and paying out a $1 million grand prize in its first season of operation. The company gave another $1 million to the winner last summer.

This year’s winner shouldn’t make such big spending plans.

The 2010 incarnation of FLW’s Fantasy Fishing announced this week a $50,000 top prize. Unsurprisingly, the news release doesn’t make any mention of the past prize amounts.

The game has always been free to play, so there’s certainly no room for anyone to complain about the smaller prize package, and creator Irwin Jacobs said from the start that the game never aimed to be an income source.

“We don’t expect to make money on the fantasy fishing game,” Jacobs, the founder of FLW Outdoors, told FSB.com in October 2008.

Instead, fantasy fishing was developed to bring attention and a new audience to the pro fishing tour. With that in mind, a change in the prize structure was likely bound to come.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– A Kentucky man won the first prize of the year in the FLW Fantasy Fishing game, and another reporter is now aware of the contest.

– To some (or at least one), SportsJudge.com’s Marc Edelman is the “Solomon of fantasy sports.”

– Expert drafts abound in baseball and football, but how often can you find out who the experts of motorcycle racing would select? The writers at motorcyclenews.com like these folks.

– If you’re among the working stiffs who starts watching the NCAA men’s basketball tournament online via CBS Sports’ March Madness on Demand, you’ll now be able to get it in high definition.