A perusal of the agenda for the upcoming FSTA summer conference turns up a very familiar face in the middle of Day 1 who will be delivering a different message.

Dr. Kim Beason has long been a regular presenter at the semi-annual Fantasy Sports Trade Association gatherings, talking through his latest results in fantasy consumer research. Before he gets to that this time, however, Beason will be joining Peter Schoenke of RotoWire to discuss “changing trends in fantasy football.”

“Have you ever wondered how popular IDPs and team QBs are?” the agenda teases. Yes, actually, I have quite a bit. I will be very interested in hearing what Beason has to say here.

Other points of interest include:

– a session with Andrew Brandt, current president of the National Football Post who formerly handled player contracts and salary-cap management for the Packers, to discuss the realities of the NFL’s current labor unrest and how a potential lockout might impact fantasy companies

– a “one-on-one” with Mickey Charles, president and CEO of The Sports Network

– a screening of Fantasyland over lunch on Day 1

– a two-room split on the conference’s second day, dividing into panels geared toward technical aspects and those focused on business; the latter ends with a session on shedding the “gambling” perception, an issue we’ve been particularly focused on around FSB.com recently.

The conference will take place June 9 and 10, with the fantasy football draft kicking things off the night before.

The FSTA also announced Tuesday a blog that will carry posts by Sara Holladay, the Fantasy Football Librarian, throughout the conference. Of course, you can also count on FSB.com for all the news from the Chicago event.

(Correction: A previous version of this story referred to Brandt as a former president of the Packers. He never held that title.)

After years of rapid growth in its consumer base, the fantasy sports industry saw things plateau a bit in the past year, according to two sets of research presented by Ipsos’ Aaron Amic and Dr. Kim Beason at the FSTA conference this week.

Over the previous five years, fantasy consumers were increasing at an average rate of about 23 percent. In the past year, though, Ipsos found that about the same number of people reported playing fantasy sports in the United States and Canada as had in the year prior.

It stands to reason that the big growth stats from the early 2000s wouldn’t continue forever, but why did the upward trend go flat at this point?

Is it money? No. Even in the toughest economic times that many of us have every seen, most of the respondents to the Ipsos suvery who had never played fantasy or quit said their decision was based on a mere lack of interest. On top of that, it’s always been true that many more fantasy players go for free leagues than pay games.

Is the audience maturing without bringing in new young people? It doesn’t seem that way. According to Ipsos, the 12-17 and 18-34 age ranges presented the largest saturation of fantasy players (i.e., a larger percentage within each of those groups played fantasy in the past year than the numbers for other ranges sampled).

Is it a matter of us all hitting a period that just required folks to turn their attention elsewhere? Maybe. The time commitment was another reason cited by those who gave up or avoided fantasy. Even if tightening budgets didn’t keep them away, perhaps sheer concern for their jobs and bank accounts led more people to decide they couldn’t afford to join a league.

Was it just a strange year? Perhaps. One year hardly constitutes a trend, and things could look significantly different in 2010.

Over the coming days and weeks, FSB.com will check in with folks around the industry to see what they think of the growth plateau and whether fantasy companies need to change anything to counter it. We’ll also get more into the material presented in this year’s editions of the annual Fantasy Sports Trade Association studies.

Nothing is recession-proof, but sports tend to be recession-resistant. That was the key message from Dr. John-Charles Bradbury, economics professor at Kennesaw State University and author of The Baseball Economist.

People are generally spending less money on everything these days, which clearly isn’t a good thing for anyone who tries to sell stuff. With less disposable income around, consumers will naturally cut back on expenditures. Bradbury says that sports are a bit more insulated than other areas when it comes to cutting.

Sports fans are passionate about their teams and thus less willing to trade them in for more spending freedom elsewhere. Within that group of sports fans, fantasy players tend to be even more passionate. Attendees of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association saw in research collected by Ipsos that fantasy players — whether they’re thinking of quitting or continuing to play — don’t consider cost an overly important factor.

Further, some fantasy game providers could be in pretty good position. Bradbury told us that many consumers will seek out cheaper options for their sports dollar as they tighten budgets, rather than stop spending money in the area altogether. Of course, the tightening of belts will make free and lower-cost options more attractive and could negatively impact the higher-cost pay-to-play and league-manager products.

At the same time, all we can do is speculate about the impact on an industry that’s still too new for us to be able to predict. Carmakers, for instance, have been around long enough to have traveled through many recession periods.

“The interesting thing about the fantasy industry is that it’s so new,” Bradbury told us. “We really have no information on the industry.”

Another part of being relatively new, Bradbury pointed out, is that the industry is malleable. Many companies — particularly the smaller sites that are plentiful on the fantasy landscape — have options when plotting their path through a down economy.

Bradbury recommended that fantasy sports companies who might be going through a period of downturn (or even slowed growth) take the opportunity to regroup and spend some time on research and development. For some, perhaps consolidation with other smaller companies could create a stronger business on the other side of the recession.

Overall, though, sports seem to weather economic storms relatively well, according to Bradbury’s presentation. Game attendance tends to level off in the major professional sports through recession periods but have continued to rise afterward. Sports, he added, are a “normal good,” meaning that demand rises and falls with income levels. Fantasy’s wealthier consumer base helps to keep those lows from going too low.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– An apparent doctoral candidate at the University of Northern Colorado says he is seeking participants for a survey of how loyal fantasy players are to their primary commissioner outlets. The form does have spaces for name and e-mail address at the end for purposes of entering a drawing, but the survey can be completed anonymously (leaving those spaces blank).

– Derrick Eckardt, who founded and ran RotoNation up until the end of last year, has resurfaced in the fantasy sports arena with his own new site, FantasyEthos.com. The initial post showed up on June 1. Welcome back, Derrick.

– iLogon — which bundles sites and applications and sells access to users — has reached a deal with Roto Sports that adds RotoWire.com to its package.

– This Bleacher Report contributor says the Saints have the league’s best fantasy roster, with Arizona, Houston, Atlanta and New England rounding out his top five. What do you think?

– Now that MLB’s top overall draft pick, Stephen Strasburg, is finally an official member of the Washington Nationals’ organization, USA Today’s Steve Gardner surveys a bit of the early opinion on the young hurler.

– ESPN has finally announced formally the addition of former NFL Network and NFL.com reporter Adam Schefter, a pending move that has been known publicly for a while. Schefter’s Sunday morning reports on NFL Network added quite a bit of value to the network’s pregame show for fantasy players last season and will be tough to replace in 2009.

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