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.

A lot of sites give away prizes here and there to the audience, plenty ask you to do something to earn it and pretty much any content outlet is always on the lookout for quality writing.

With its Fight for Your Write competition, RotoExperts.com is combining all of that while also encouraging folks to get as familiar as possible with its content.

Here’s the deal, RotoExperts.com is accepting article submissions up through April 2 in which contestants are asked to describe how the sites baseball draft kit helped them. One winner will get a copy of 2K Sports’ Major League Baseball 2K10, an Evan Longoria Fathead Jr. and a Buffalo Wild Wings sweatshirt. That person will also get his or her article published on RotoExperts.com.

“It certainly is a talent search,” RotoExperts’ Scott Engel told FSB.com. “One of our editors has already asked to play the role of Simon Cowell.”

Aside from providing some positive PR for the site and drawing any readers encouraged by the prizes, such a challenge can work like the old Open Pen competitions that Matthew Berry’s TalentedMrRoto.com used to host. There’s certainly no guarantee that the winner (or any entrant) turns into a regular contributor, but it’s worth a shot.

And even if that end of it doesn’t work out, it’s still fun to win some prizes, the first two of which are being provided by 2K Sports.

“Personally, I’m an avid sports gamer and wing eater, so I’m glad we’re doing this,” Engel said.

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

– Verizon Wireless and the NFL announced a deal Tuesday that will present live football coverage to the handsets of Verizon customers for at least the next four years — including fantasy panacea the Red Zone Channel.

– Switched.com rates the MyFantasyTeams application among the best sports apps available for the Blackberry. Just what Blackberry owners need, another reason to keep staring at the thing.

– A writer for the Hollywood Reporter applied the letter of the well-known (at least around these parts) federal UIGEA law to the common practice of holding Academy Awards pools. His assessment: As long as you stick to the same types of money rules that govern fantasy-games providers, there’s enough skill involved to keep things legit.

– RotoHog has signed on to build a celebrity-based fantasy game for US Weekly magazine.

– Dave Richard of CBSSports.com uses the site’s Tableau-produced analytics to compare value across positions for the past football season.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

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.