In a brief segment from a show on the YES Network, Forbes national editor Michael Ozanian speaks about the growing fantasy sports market and how favorable the consumers are who make it up.

Honestly, if you follow the fantasy sports market research as we do here at FSB.com, this video probably won’t tell you anything new. When the folks near the top of the American financial food chain realize and report on the strength of our industry, though, it’s worth passing along.

The “Fantasy Sports Hit Mainstream” video below the featured clip features Rotoworld’s Gregg Rosenthal and Rick Cordella — along with Eric Fisher of the Sports Business Journal — talking about just what the title says. Rosenthal, for one, thinks that we’ve only seen the very beginning of fantasy’s integration into the mainstream and that plenty more awaits.

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.

Who: Dr. Kim Beason

What: Associate professor, park and recreation management, Ole Miss

Founder, Fantasy Sport Research Specialists LLC

Back in 2001, Dr. Beason went searching for studies on fantasy sports consumers, curious to find out why people played and what impact these games had on professional sports. He found the area lacking. Seeing a need for better understanding of this growing phenomenon, he decided to collect the data on his own but was stonewalled in his attempts to connect with companies that could provide customer lists.

That led the Ole Miss professor to trudge out to Las Vegas (not a bad destination if you have to trudge) and pitched his idea to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (then known as the Fantasy Sports Players Association). He offered to match the group’s funding through the first three years of a research project in return for the FSTA encouraging its members to supply consumer targets for the research. A partnership was born.

From the first study in 2002 and 2003, Beason’s pursuit of learning more about those who play fantasy sports quickly grew into popular and valuable research on the fantasy market and the consumer-spending habits of participants. Businesses used the data to court advertisers and more effectively target consumers. Media outlets latched onto the numbers to reflect the growth in this particular entertainment industry. Perhaps most importantly, the study’s valuable findings have driven up inquiries from FSTA constituents, which has in turn enhanced the breadth and depth of the information collected.

“Dr. Beason is the godfather of fantasy sports market research,” says Jeff Thomas, president of the FSTA and CEO of SportsBuff.com, which owns this site. “He took a chance on our small association many years ago, funded many of his own expenses to help kick off our research efforts and is now recognized as the top fantasy sports consumer behavior expert in the world.”

The project grew to the point that in 2006, Beason founded Fantasy Sport Research Specialists LLC “to serve as a clearinghouse for research,” an enterprise he shares with three partners. Although the annual FSTA study - whose sixth set of annual results were presented at the FSTA conference in Chicago on July 8 and 9 - is the company’s primary focus, there are other considerations as well.

“We also explore fantasy sport as a medium to teach children, relationships and differences between the fantasy sports and gaming industries, and fantasy sport in the workplace,” Beason says. “FSRS also conduct specialty-market, branding and product-development research for individual fantasy sport companies.”

Not surprisingly, all of this work stemmed from a career as a fantasy-sports player that began in 1989 with a keeper football league at Ole Miss. Beason quickly learned in his second season not to mix business too closely with pleasure, however, when hosting the league’s draft in a campus classroom nearly got him fired.

“My butt was in a sling for about 2 weeks,” he says. “I had to convince them (they were still skeptical) that what we did wasn’t gambling but a game of skill, and the league fees - 30 bucks - was given to the winner.  I ended up hanging on to my job by promising to never, ever, conduct another fantasy sport event on campus.”

Then again, one might argue that the lesson didn’t really take root.

“Heck, I play and research fantasy sport as a (small) part of my job!” Beason says. “Talk about fortunate.”

Twice a year, the Center for Digital Transformation at Penn State University holds a research forum and invites speakers to address a gathering of member companies on “emerging trends in technology and business.” This fall, the emerging trend was fantasy sports, and the speaker was Jeff Thomas, CEO of SportsBuff.com (which owns this site) and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

Thomas’ speech, titled “Fantasy Sports: Web Marketing’s Holy Grail,” provided corporate decision makers with an overview of the engaged fantasy sports consumer and the value of fantasy sports as a promotional tool. Thomas believes that all fantasy sports business leaders need to help spread the word to educate brand managers, business leaders, and sports marketers.

“Guests reported to me that the fantasy sports market was far bigger than they had thought, and Jeff’s statistics on user engagement definitely got people’s attention,” said Dr. John Jordan, executive director of the CDT.

Past speakers at the forum have included representatives of Google, Ernst & Young, IBM, Wachovia, Booz Allen Hamilton, Gartner, and Xerox.

Thomas has shared fantasy sports industry insight at Conferences in Montreal and Vancouver, and recently spoke to sports marketing students at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School.