Greg Ambrosius of Fanball announced Thursday afternoon that the company has added former Mock Draft Central operations manager Geoff Stein.

While with MDC, Stein developed a working relationship with the National Fantasy Football Championship and National Fantasy Baseball Championship, which were acquired by Fanball in a deal with F+W Media last summer.

“One of my main duties at MDC was dealing with companies that licensed out our draft software, and we had no bigger client than the NFBC/NFFC,” Stein told FSB.com. “Basically, I made sure that everyone was in the software on time, and if there were any problems, I took care of them immediately. When you’re dealing with 14 or 15 people whose computer skills range from ‘expert’ to ‘knows how to turn on,’ anything can and usually does pop up.”

Stein will fill a similar role with the company as a full-time employee and will also contribute fantasy content for Fanball’s various outlets.

“Geoff has been an important part of our success as the NFBC began expanding into online pay games starting in 2006 and we believe that he will be even more important to our success as we grow our NFBC, NFFC and NFBBC satellite leagues and online Double Plays,” Ambrosius wrote in the announcement posted on the NFBC message board.

Mock Draft Central, of course, was just recently purchased by RotoWire. With Stein moving immediately into his Fanball role, MDC founder Jason Pliml remains to help transition the company to its new ownership.

Stein is a five-year veteran of the fantasy sports industry and a member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association board of directors.

It seemed fairly obvious from the sale process that Mock Draft Central generated serious interest on the open market.

When founder and president Jason Pliml first told FSB.com of the intention to sell, the plan was to put MDC up for auction back in November, with a starting bid of $195,000. Before things got to that point, though, Pliml’s company fielded enough direct offers that the direction quickly changed.

“We had at least eight seriously interested parties and probably another six that expressed initial interest,” Pliml told FSB.com this week. “The number of serious suitors was cut in half when we required an all-cash offer as opposed to a combination of cash and private equity.”

Pliml said that although every potential suitor was looking to acquire the whole company, the interest tended to lie in one of three areas:

• Those who were looking to add MDC’s sizable user base
• Those most interested in the inherent live-draft technology
• Those who wanted to grow the company while basically following the existing path

“RotoWire falls into the last category of running it and growing it using a similar business model, particularly since the business model MDC operates under so closely parallels the RotoWire business model,” Pliml said. “Because of the similarities, the transition has been very smooth thus far.

“RotoWire has the same philosophy of good customer service and innovating with technology, so I anticipate they’ll be able to grow things and roll out new features as they get comfortable running what is already in place.”

RotoWire president Peter Schoenke echoed those ideas of similarity and growth potential lying in the parallel philosophies, adding that an existing relationship between the companies helped bring a deal to fruition.

“It just was a really good fit for both parties,” Schoenke told FSB.com in the wake of the announcement. “I’ve known Jason since he started the company and we were one of his first business-to-business partners, so there was a lot familiarity.”

Both sides said that the agreement came about pretty easily, with any delay in finalizing the sale generated only by the sometimes slow steps of the legal-paperwork process.

Now that the acquisition is done, though, Schoenke said RotoWire plans to use its content to bolster MDC’s offerings and vice versa. He sees plenty of value in areas such as the broad and deep average-draft-position statistics of MDC that can help bolster RotoWire’s content offerings in a number of sports. In turn, Schoenke said that RotoWire content will be “integrated” into Mock Draft Central offerings, and that his companies technical knowhow will be put to use in growing the MDC software and applications.

“We plan to invest a lot into the continued development of the draft application … [and] improving the consumer side of the web site,” Schoenke said, adding that they’d like to retain as many “as possible” of MDC’s business-to-business relationships. “MDC really is a unique site in the fantasy sports business in many ways, so we’ll leverage that content and the business opportunities from the software.”

Pliml says he anticipates sticking around for about a year to help get through the transition process, and Schoenke said that Geoff Stein is playing a similar role and will also not remain with the company long term.

Mock Draft Central, meanwhile, joins RotoWire under the umbrella of Roto Sports Inc., which also owns DatabaseSports.com and FantasySportsAdNetwork.com.

RotoWire announced Wednesday that it has purchased fantasy-draft site MockDraftCentral.com.

“It’s a great fit because both businesses have subscription models that focus on customer service and offering products that are worth paying for to give a fantasy owner a competitive advantage,” RotoWire president Peter Schoenke said in the company’s news release.

RotoWire stated that MDC will remain as a standalone site and said that existing customers should count on the same subscription packages and customer service as before. Mock Draft Central founder Jason Pliml will work with RotoWire during the transition period.

Pliml and his company’s board of directors put Mock Draft Central up for sale in the fall, when Pliml said he was ready to take his career in a different direction. Pliml said at the time that MDC carried a user base of about 128,000, and the company won Fantasy Sports Trade Association awards for its technology in 2007 and 2008.

The concept was born back in 2001, with MDC going live online in 2002.

FSB.com will have more on the acquisition as we talk to those involved.

Eight years after creating Mock Draft Central, Jason Pliml says he’s ready for new challenges.

“Having achieved what I set out to do when I started Mock Draft Central back in 2001, my roles and responsibilities have diminished and I want to take my life and career in a different direction,” Pliml told FSB.com. “With my energy focused on sales, brand awareness, and managing software consultants, we grew revenue to the point of profitability. MDC has reached the point of having reliable, award-winning technology, a well-known and respected brand, and a large, loyal audience.”

Pliml says that audience includes a user base of 128,000, with unique-visitor traffic averaging about 30,000 a month over the past year. (That number, of course, varies wildly throughout the year, peaking at 109,770 in August — just before football season — according to Compete.com.)

As for revenue, a feature in The Detroit News to which we recently linked said that MDC is bringing in $250,000 this year.

The company won Fantasy Sports Trade Association awards in both 2007 and 2008 for its technology and has held licensing partnerships with various companies around the fantasy sports industry.

Pliml says that MDC has received some direct purchase offers, which will be reviewed by the board of directors. No deadline has been set for the sale, but the site continues to operate throughout this process. (Visitors can already get a jump on the 2010 baseball season, for example.)

Interested parties can contact Pliml, whose e-mail address is also available on the MDC website.

FSB.com will have more information once a sale is made.