This week’s FSTA summer conference presented a stronger set of elevator pitches than we saw at the winter conference in Vegas, but the winner wasn’t a surprise.

FightMetric hit the stage with a well-planned, simple-to-follow presentation and a comfortable, confident presenter in Alon Cohen.

The company focuses on the collection and dispersal of statistics for mixed martial arts and related to the crowd that it had recently signed on as the official stat provider for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

There’s no denying the explosion in popularity over the past few years for MMA, so it’s no stretch to think of fantasy MMA as an area with enticing growth potential. That, no doubt, is the key reason that FightMetric pitched to fantasy folks on Wednesday afternoon, and the company seemed to draw the desired result.

The other participants, who still were able to get their word out to the crowd:

FantasyPro.com — This new site that doesn’t appear to be live yet on the Web will allow fantasy teams to compete against those outside its league. The creators are seeking deals with existing league-hosting sites to enable integration and will not host its own leagues. Users will be able to challenge others via the Fantasy Pro platform in free or pay games and take part in games put on by the site itself.

Fantasy Sports 4 Kids — As a slightly emotional Brian Riggs told the group, this is not a new site seeking to host kids fantasy games; it’s a much more worthy outlet. FS4Kids, which currently lives online only as a blog, will seek to connect fantasy leagues with charities, while also spotlighting the good works of children’s charities and NFL players who have helped children. Participants will enter their league fees like in your normal pay league, but the winners will be able to put their prizes toward charities that will be easier to locate via this community. Riggs told us that the idea was borne from his own daughter’s fight with cancer (it’s in remission) and that he already had 126 leagues interested. Here’s hoping the concept comes together well.

Pickemfirst — Alain de Raynal had presented to the FSTA crowd previously (and won the pitch session), but this time he came with his company’s newer concept: the blog aggregator. Whereas the initial application enabled fantasy players to quickly check on a player’s availability in multiple leagues while reading online content, the new aggregator pulls in articles via RSS feeds and presents them via popup window when you encounter particular player names in Web content. For example, de Raynal showed us an article in which he came across Diamondbacks pitcher Edwin Jackson. The Pickemfirst blog aggregator showed the three most recent article mentioning Jackson from three differen online outlets. Anyone interested in being included needs only to give Pickemfirst the OK to pull material.

RosterSlots.com — FSB.com previously presented a full writeup on RosterSlots, so here’s just a quick summary. It’s a fantasy baseball game (which also treated the Olympics in February) that plays like a slot machine, incorporating enough trades and player decisions (plus no cash involved) to steer clear of gambling.

WaiverWire.com — Another veteran of the elevator-pitch session, WaiverWire.com’s primary pursuit is a tool built on Wall Street analytics that serves as a virtual assistant coach throughout the season, crunching all the pertinent numbers to help you make lineup and player-movement decisions. New for this year was a revenue-sharing model for fantasy sites interested in a partnership.

Fantazzle — Ryan Parr’s site does its primary business in short-window fantasy games, but his pitch focused more on his white-label offerings. Fantazzle presents various options for games that can carry the hosts brand as well interesting in-game advertising potential, such as positioning logos on virtual race cars for a NASCAR game.

PASPN.net – Probably the most serious of fantasy platforms that we’ve yet come across, the NBA GM game at the center of Ngozika Nwaneri’s online community involves year-round attention to your basketball franchise. It allows consumers to play as either general manager or player agent, each side having to deal with the other in various personnel situations.

TodayInFantasy.com – The latest Footballguys online entry wants to be Google for fantasy football (and eventually other sports as well). For more information, reach the recent FSB.com story.

Advanced Sports Logic — Welcome to The Machine. Frankly, I’m not sure I could properly explain this, so here’s what the site says: “Our patent-pending Probulator^TM technology … uses the variance and accuracy of player projections to simulate your entire fantasy football season with powerful probability distributions.” It’s another tool for making stat-based recommendations throughout the year to help your fantasy football team.

Fantasy Judgment – Michael A. Stein is the latest lawyer to launch a site for fantasy dispute resolution. In addition to offering a single-use package and full-season option, Stein is in the market for partnerships with league-hosting sites to provides his services to users.

Lawyer Travis McCoy provided a particularly valuable presentation on the first morning of the FSTA summer conference Wednesday, detailing the nine states that have been giving fantasy companies trouble.

Louisiana has been the one in the news lately, but Arizona, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington all present gambling laws that either directly outlaw or create a fog of illegality concerning residents paying for a chance to win at fantasy games.

McCoy ran through the various specifics in each state’s law that presents trouble for fantasy. He related that despite differing language, it’s probably not safe at this point to residents of those nine states to compete in your pay-to-play games.

Beyond that, though, even free games can be tricky. Anti-gambling statutes tend to focus on participants risking something of value, which we tend to think of as a buy-in or entry fee. McCoy, however, pointed out that state courts have set the “something of value” bar pretty low — meaning that fantasy companies should be careful and probably seek legal advice in setting the parameters for even their free games.

Of course, the Louisiana story grew because of an effort to change that state’s rules. The stark failure of that effort and the fact that consecutive Maryland bills haven’t even reached a vote on the floor highlights the need for lobbying work from the fantasy industry.

Legal challenges could be possible, as McCoy pointed out — particularly in relation to the federal Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court has interpreted from that clause the “dormant” Commerce Clause, which McCoy summed up this way: “A state’s law may be ruled unconstitutional if that law places an undue burden on interstate commerce.”

McCoy said he would consider the restrictions on fantasy payouts in certain states damaging to interstate commerce.

The problem with challenging the laws is that it would be a costly, lengthy process whose outcome might be trickier. It would be open to judge interpretation of existing laws.

The lobbying front could work to educate and encourage politicians, seeking to push for introduction of new legislation — such as the bills recently presented in Louisiana and Maryland.

We saw the lack of knowledge about fantasy in Louisiana, where it took just a single e-mail blast from the misguided Louisiana Family Forum to scare off all but 16 House delegates. Rep. Thomas Carmody said he has no plans to pursue another bill, and he and his colleagues would have little motivation to pursue something that is a very minor issue to them and brings potential political downside.

In Maryland, a House bill has been brought two years in a row to legalize fantasy payouts. Neither iteration has even made its way to the floor for a vote.

We’ll see what the FSTA and companies throughout the fantasy industry decide to do going forward, but it’s becoming clearer that they need to do something.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association announced Thursday afternoon that Big Game Software will serve as the title sponsor for the upcoming summer business conference.

Regular FSTA attendees will probably recognize the faces associated with Big Game but might not be familiar with the name. Big Game formerly operated under the title Fantasy Coverage and has shown up as a sponsor at the conference several times before. Fantasy Coverage now serves as a division of Big Game.

Other sponsors include MyFantasyLeague.com (last summer’s title sponsor and current backer of the Wednesday night outing to a White Sox game) and SportsDirect. Other spots remain available, according to the FSTA.

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.)