What: Interactive Sports Conference
When: March 24-25
Where: Las Vegas
Details: ISC website
Sponsor: Fantasy Sports Association

If Adrian Glass were a woman, his new concept might be met with a flood of marriage proposals.

The former accountant quit his job a little more than two years ago and will soon open a sports bar in Maplewood, Mo., designed for fantasy players.

A growing number of adult-beverage establishments have begun marketing to fantasy folks in the late summer, when many are looking for a place to fill their football rosters and add a few wing-sauce stains to their favorite jersey. Glass’ place, however, will go a few steps further.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “The Post will feature a draft room with a 60-inch TV where leagues can hold drafts and meetings … two computers for public use and $900 worth of high-end wireless routers to make sure any number of players can jump on their laptops … (and) a fantasy guru to talk patrons through trades and other draft issues.”

The Post is also reportedly working out a deal with Fanball — now based in the St. Louis area — whereby the company will provide custom software and fantasy games for the bar.

Glass aims to not only draw the draft-time fantasy crowds but extend its fantasy hospitality by catering to the growing market of weekly fantasy games.

Count Fantasy Sports Association president Greg Ambrosius among those who like the concept.

“They’re doing something that should have been done years ago,” he told the Post-Dispatch. “This guy may have a chance to be ahead of the curve.”

Of course, non-fantasy players won’t be turned away at the door (just snickered at).

“We’re a sports bar,” Glass told the Post-Dispatch. “If you’re not into fantasy sports, you won’t notice that we’re different.”

No details yet on how to apply for the position of bar fantasy guru, but you can bet that when I hear them, I’ll be keeping them a secret.

Talk about a dream job.

The 10th Annual Sports Media & Technology Conference, presented by the Fantasy Sports Association, Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily, took place Thursday and Friday amid a tough economic landscape.

Leaders from around the sports media field met in New York City to discuss and learn about the way some top companies are dealing with the tough times and to find out what might be on the industry’s horizon.

Ted Kasten, founder of Advanced Sports Media — which develops the Draft Analyzer fantasy draft software and PlayerSearch, the first sports-focused search engine — was in attendance and shared his notes from the forum with FSB.com:

The economy was obviously a huge focal point. There were three related themes discussed throughout the conference:

1) Companies need dual revenue streams during the economic downturn: Companies with dual revenue streams (advertising revenue plus subscription revenue) will be in much better shape during the economic downturn than companies that rely solely on advertising revenue. Sports, in particular golf, will be hit hard because of their dependence on financial firms and domestic car companies for sponsorships. Jimmy Pitaro of Yahoo pointed out that they have always been tempted to provide all of their fantasy tools, such as the Stat Tracker, for free but never did as those premium products continued to grow every year and are currently growing faster than their free services. Considering the change in online advertising, that was a smart move to retain the premium features.

2) Major sporting events such as the BCS moving to cable: Broadcast networks that rely solely on advertising revenue are unable to compete with ESPN and their powerful dual revenue streams. Demonstrating this was ESPN’s recent acquisition of the rights to the BCS games from Fox. Fox was unable to match the $125 million/year bid from ESPN (Fox currently pays $82.5 million/year for the rights to the BCS). This will be the first time these games will not be available on free broadcast TV.

3) Flight to Quality: Panels repeatedly stated that a “flight to quality” will make the smaller companies feel more of the pain from the downturn in advertising than the larger companies and brands.

The first and third items should be of particular interest to companies within the fantasy industry. “Flight to quality” is a phrase said to originate in stock trading, and it refers to taking investments out of risky ventures in favor of the safest possible entities.

For the purposes of our industry, it could mean advertisers, sponsors or even investors veering away from smaller fantasy outfits or new ventures and throwing their money behind the familiar names.

Any lack of funding from those avenues feed directly into the need for dual revenue streams. Obviously, if a fantasy site can’t pay its way on advertising dollars alone, it has to find other ways to stay viable. That, in turn, brings us to the whole free vs. subscription quandary that not only faces many a fantasy site but all sorts of content and service providers around the Web.

If you’re reading this site, you’re probably already facing these issues, but maybe you’ll find it a little heartening to know that such things are on everyone’s minds throughout the industry — even the big boys.

Fantasy players tend to spend more money, particularly on the products commonly marketed to sports fans, according to a recent study by Ipsos Public Affairs.

The study, commissioned by the Fantasy Sports Association, determined that 73 percent of fantasy sports participants had bought beer within a month of the survey. Compare that number to 47 percent of the general population and even just 52 percent of all sports fans, and you get a good example of the buying power that the average fantasy consumer brings.

“We need to tell Madison Avenue that we’re not just this small, nichey geek audience,” Greg Ambrosius, FSA president and editor of Fantasy Sports Magazine, told Sports Business Journal. “This gives us the next step into really seeing who the fantasy consumer is. In the ’90s, we were often positioned simply as fantasy geeks. But looking at this, we’re really big-time consumers.”

This study supports previous findings in similar studies, including those conducted by Ipsos for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Especially at a time when consumers are increasingly nervous about their spending habits and companies are more cautious with their ad dollars, it helps to realize the kind of bang that can reside in a fantasy buck.