In the latest sign of fantasy sports’ ability to swim in the mainstream, Compete.com released last month some stats on the Web habits of fantasy players.

Compete drew results from a panel of “more than 2 million” Internet users based in the United States for the month of September, compiling numbers on daily reach, search habits and time spent on various fantasy sites.

The fantasy sports subdomain on Yahoo! and the games subdomain ESPN.com, respectively, came out as the clear top two in unique visitors, each more than doubling the next ranked URL. Worthy of note, however, is that NFL.com’s fantasy area came in third, even if you were to combine the results for each of the three ranked CBS Sports subdomains (football, baseball and college football).

Streak.espn.go.com led the way in average stay, checking in at nearly 5 minutes more than No. 2 fantasy.nfl.com. That URL, of course, takes surfers to ESPN’s Beat the Streak game, which won a Fantasy Sports Trade Association award for 2009. FleaFlicker.com and fantasy.foxsports.com followed in that category.

RTSports.com led the way in visits per person for the month at 20.56. Only two other sites beat Compete.com’s overall tally for the category (14.71): baseball.cbssports.com and myfantasyleague.com.

Other data points drawn into focus in the Compete.com release were:

– Unique visitor numbers don’t tell the entire story. Fantasysports.yahoo.com was the top site for UVs in September (6,115,530) but “attention” increased 130 percent — still not bad, while fantasy.nfl.com attention increase by 370 percent. Perhaps the increased focus on video at fantasy.nfl.com is behind its relatively higher attention.

– For search, ESPN was the clear winner for September. It captured three of the top five search-share positions: “espn” was the number one keyword sending traffic to the fantasy category, “espn fantasy football” was the number two keyword and “espn.com” was number four.

– Fantasy players drop off as the season wanes. Baseball.cbssports.com, which reached its season high in April of 516,761 UVs, was down to 347,416 in September with attention down (44 percent) and visits per person down (25 percent) from August. It’s likely that many players lose interest as they move out of contention and content related to the next fantasy season emerges (football, hockey and basketball). Wise brands should track these trends and use the insights to drive campaign creative and media buying.

More results can be found in the table below …

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

– Bloomberg Sports has rolled out its Decision Maker product for fantasy football folks, promising to use algorithms to compare any two players for start/sit lineup decisions. The product is $8 for the season but will be available for free to players using NFL.com.

– Tom Lorenzo of Fanhouse discusses the move of college football closer to the fantasy mainstream, with insight from CBS’ Brian Jones. (Of course, if you’ve been with us here at FSB.com long enough, you’ve been following the ascension for a while.)

– Back in late August, Fantrax chose to sponsor NASCAR Canada driver Kerry Micks to help introduce their service to Canadian fantasy players.

– WeMade Entertainment’s Fantasy Football Manager is in open beta for the 2010-2011 English Premier League season. (That’s soccer, for our mouth-breathing contingent.)

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

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

– Yahoo!’s acquisition of Citizen Sports has led new Facebook-connected social functionality (sponsored by Miller Lite) for its fantasy football teams this year. Anyone with a team on Yahoo! Sports will be able to “like” that team and get player updates and other content delivered straight to his or her Facebook news stream.

– The promotional plan for NFL.com’s new fantasy football league-management product has moved from Phase 1 — targeting existing league managers — to Phase 2, which will focus more on drawing in new players. NFL.com will also reportedly start a fantasy football show on the Web in September. (Why NFL Network doesn’t have a dedicated fantasy show yet for the predominant field of American players is a mystery to us.)

– It can be interesting enough to see where Maurice Jones-Drew will go in Round 1 of the typical 2010 fantasy football draft, but Jones-Drew himself helped add interest to the Sirius XM Times Square draft on Wednesday. The Jaguars running back worked a trade with fellow host Jay Thomas to acquire himself, after Thomas drafted MJD third overall. Here are (most of) the rest of the results.

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

– The Fantasy Players Association website passes along word that the Fantasy Football Players Championship has chosen RealTimeSports to host its leagues this year. The FPA also raises some concerns that the FFPC audience might have with the switch from previous host MyFantasyLeague.com.

– You’ve surely heard of the fancy new fantasy league-hosting product at NFL.com, but did you know that EA Sports will be providing the player projections for the full season and on a weekly basis?

– Have you ever played in a Yahoo! public league (or a free mock draft anywhere) and gotten annoyed by the person who screws the thing up with idiotic early picks? Well, FantasySharks.com is encouraging them. For the fifth straight year, the site is supporting a challenge in which participants join a “competitive” Yahoo! public league and draft a kicker and a team defense with their first two picks. The top prize (a sum of “sand dollars,” Fantasy Sharks’ fake currency) goes to anyone who can win their league.

– For accuracy in running back rankings, RotoWorld edged the field of participants who have been in the FF Librarian’s Accuracy Challenge for all three years it has existed. KFFL, however, has been dynamite over the past two seasons.

– In the wake of Yahoo! opening up its fantasy sports API, FanGraphs takes a crack at explaining a bit about what it is and what it allows you to do.

– Did you miss out on fantasy points when England’s clear goal was disallowed against Germany? Did you miss the game and the replay? Legos have your back.

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