Name: John Zaleski
Nickname: Dr. Z
Job title(s): Owner
Full-time in fantasy? Since 1991
Age: 50
Education: BA in Marketing - Long Beach St.
Family status: Married 26 years with 3 kids, ages 21, 21, 13
Favorite fantasy sport to play: Baseball and Football
Favorite sport to watch: Hockey
Favorite team (any sport): Ducks and Angels
All-time favorite athlete: Teemu Selanne
Years playing fantasy: 26

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: The Original 1984 Rotisserie League Baseball Handbook came out. I started organizing work and fraternity leagues the next day.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes:
1986 — Started “California Fantasy Sports” organizing So. Cal. leagues.
1988 — Changed name to “Ultimate Fantasy Sports” and went nationwide.
1989 — First of many Owners Conventions in Las Vegas
1990 — Started “Lifetime” Leagues where owners keep all players on their team from year to year.
1998-2000 — Co-Host Of Fantasy Fever Daily Internet Radio Show on Sportsline.com.
1999 — One of 12 founding board members of Fantasy Sports Trade Assocication.
2000 — FSTA Football Broadcast Award Winner
2001 — UFS Baseball Park Tour treated customers to games in 14 cities in 45 days with stops at Hall Of Fame venues in Cooperstown and Toronto.
2001 — Nominated for FSTA Lifetime Achievement Award
2002 — FSTA Executive of the Year Award
2002 — FSTA Small Business of the Year Award
2008 — Fantasy Factor Partners founded.

Three questions

1. You started your fantasy sports business before there was really anything we could call an industry. What made you believe success was possible in this space?

I started “fantasy” games in 1968, creating leagues playing “All-Star” baseball by Cadaco. I also created games in all sports combining a deck of cards with player stats. When I started UFS, I knew there were millions of sports fans with a passion as deep as mine, and I am not surprised at where the industry is today.

2. There aren’t many folks who can speak to the difference between running games before and after the dawn and spread of the Internet. How would you describe it?

Having a Life. Night and Day. Seriously, we started before FAX machines, and I remember leaving weekly reports on an answering machine and rotating the league reports each week. A 16-line, $25K voice-mail machine made the timeliness of lineup submission and league reports much improved until we went to the Net in 1997.

3. What makes your new venture, Fantasy Factor, different from other weekly/daily fantasy models hitting the market these days?

There are more than a dozen features that we feel make us better than the current models.

The “factor” style of game leads to more strategy than a salary-cap game, and it takes a minute to create a team, instead of the 10-15 of a cap game.

We guarantee action/prizes even if a league does not fill.

The website/game app is one of the best to ever hit the industry and was developed by one of the best interactive agencies in the U.S.

The rules of the game are simple, challenging and fun to play.

Bonus: Can you name the first players you ever drafted in each fantasy sport?

No fair!! That was 1984!! Let me go fire up the old AppleIIc. I’ll get back to you …

Fantasy Sports Ventures has bought a piece of Sports Reference LLC, the company that runs Baseball-Reference.com and other popular sports information sites.

According to the Sports Business Journal report, FSV “paid a low seven-figure sum” for the stake, raising to 15 the number of sites in its Fantasy Players Network in which FSV owns a stake. The network — of which Sports Reference was already part — comprises 370 sites in all. The group of 15 reportedly account for about 25 percent of the network’s total traffic.

“This was a very unique asset where we had the desire and saw an opportunity to get involved at a much deeper level,” said FSV chief executive Chris Russo told SBJ. “We think we can help them grow and continue to build scale. We also hope to use this relationship and build some custom market opportunities for advertisers within the Sports Reference group of sites.”

Sports Reference started in April 2000 with the launch of Baseball-Reference.com by then college math professor Sean Forman. Pro-Football-Reference.com came online in December of that year through the work of fellow math professor Doug Drinen. In April 2004, statistics professor Justin Kubatko launched Basketball-Reference.com, and the three combined under the Sports Reference heading in October of that year.

Two years later, Forman quit teaching to go full time with Sports Reference, which also encompasses Hockey-Reference.com and an Olympics site. Forman told SBJ that the FSV investment will allow the company to go even further.

“We have a number of new areas we’re looking to get into,” Forman said. “We’ve basically been in the big four sports and Olympics, so this investment gives the capital to go pursue that.”

Most significantly, Sports Reference plans to enter the realm of college athletics, a potentially daunting task because of the abundance of teams but also a potential traffic bonanza thanks to the rabidity of college fan bases. The emerging market for fantasy college sports certainly won’t hurt things on that front either.

SBJ reports that Sports Reference’s group of sites already garner about a million unique page views a month, about a tenth of the total unique views for the Fantasy Players Network according to comScore’s December stats.

As of Feb. 16, fans of baseball and hockey will be able to purchase online access to MLB and NHL games in one shot.

Whereas $109.95 will buy you a full season of MLB.tv and $79.95 will purchase the NHL’s Race for the Cup programming package, those who would like both will be able to bundle them for $139.95.

Obviously, this is a nice offering for any fans who would like access to online broadcasts from both leagues. Even for those of us who won’t be purchasing it, though, the package is an interesting new partnership between completely separate sports entities.

If this bundling proves popular, could it lead to more joint packaging by leagues both online and on TV? The NHL and NBA each start their seasons while the NFL is playing. Football season begins about a month before MLB is done. Players arrive in Florida and Arizona for spring training about halfway through basketball and hockey schedules and right about the same time that NASCAR season opens.

Even an entity like Major League Soccer could see an opportunity to tag along with the stronger following of another sport.

For fantasy players and writers, it would certainly be nice to get a discount by combining a couple of programming packages they would normally purchase anyway.

We’ll see what comes of this partnership.

It would be a strange year if RotoWire’s Janet Eagelson weren’t up for top hockey honors when the Fantasy Sports Writers Association honors its members.

Eagleson has taken each of the FSWA’s first two awards for best hockey writer and is once again a finalist. This time, she’ll battle Sean Allen of ESPN.com and Scott Pianowski of Yahoo! for the top prize. Pianowski is also a finalist for the FSWA’s top baseball writer award.

The trophies will be handed out next Tuesday on the first day of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association’s winter business conference.