We’re all familiar with the usual fantasy baseball setup at this point. Whether you’re playing in a draft-style or salary-cap format, you try to collect the best group of players possible and beat whoever else is playing.

RosterSlots.com still asks you to build the best team, but rather than having you draft one at a time against competitors or fill each position without exceeding a “salary” limit, the site presents a slot machine. You click on the virtual lever, and three players come up at random.

The user gets a certain number of spins to fill a lineup, forcing you to decide whether to keep each set of results or take a chance that your next spin will be better.

Peter Wikander says he came up with the idea about three years ago, bringing the concept to fruition for a closed beta test during the 2009 Arizona Fall League season and then an open beta for the recently concluded Olympics.

“RosterSlots.com combines the randomness of slot machines with the strategy of fantasy game play to provide a transaction-rich casual fantasy baseball game,” Wikander told FSB.com. “I hope to attract everyone from fantasy baseball veterans to casual baseball fans who feel that a traditional fantasy league is too much for them. RosterSlots.com is simple and quick enough that you can play on the side, without making a full-time commitment.”

Although baseball is the game Wikander started with and will fully roll out first this year, his Winter Olympics offering garnered some positive attention — including some space in Nando Di Fino’s online Wall Street Journal column. In that version, users spun to acquire a trio of countries for each medal event, with the same spin rules as baseball.

“People really seemed to like doing this with the Olympics, so I think I’ll do that again in 2012,” Wikander said. “RosterSlots is a nice fit for non-standard, special event-type sports that typically have a concentrated event schedule and a good many unknown ‘players,’ so I think there’s an ongoing opportunity for RosterSlots to provide fantasy games for casual and niche sports fans who are drawn to these types of events.”

Key to his concept is the daily schedule of games — such as in special-event setups like the Olympics and the 162-game Major League Baseball season.

Of course, in an industry constantly having to differentiate itself from gambling, the obvious initial red flag with RosterSlots.com is that it sure looks like gambling. Wikander contends that his model doesn’t fit the existing parameters of gambling and that there is plenty of strategy involved to keep the “fantasy” flag flying.

“In no way does the site operate like a traditional slot machine: There are no odds, no payout, no predetermined winning combinations,” he said. “The slot machine is just a simple, interactive and intuitive platform on which to play out the economies inherent in building a roster. How much of your ‘budget’ do you spend trying to land a superstar? Do you stick with a known entity, or push your luck and risk creating a gap in your lineup? How do you get the most value out of your current assets?”

Increasing the strategy component is the fact that users can trade spin results to others to acquire their unused spins. That’s not exactly the traditional model of fantasy trading, but you’re also not sitting there mindlessly hoping for cherries to show up.

Assuming that Wikander can avoid any gambling-perception issues, the only remaining concern would be building an audience — i.e. giving users a reason to play and keep playing.

Wikander says he doesn’t plan to ever charge for his game and that prizes aren’t currently on the horizon either. He’s hoping to leverage the fantasy player’s love of transactions and build a community that will keep users on board.

In that case, Wikander will likely have to work hard to convince users to bring their friends and family members along to compete. The game is certainly simple enough for anyone to pick up, regardless of their level of fantasy knowledge. With no money or prizes on the line, however, the only allure will lie in beating others.

For that reason, RosterSlots might be ideally suited for short-term events such as the Olympics, professional tennis and extreme sports. That audience will be easier to hold for the duration of a fantasy season. Despite the obvious draw of baseball’s everyday schedule, six months is a long time to hold a consumer’s attention.

Then again, the rise of daily and weekly fantasy games opens up a variety of possibilities for game play here. As with all new concepts in this industry, we’ll see how the audience reacts.

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

– FantasyFanatics.com announced Tuesday that Mike Pera, owner of FantasyDraftTools.com, won the site’s inaugural preseason rankings game, which provides Pera an entry into the 2010 World Championship of Fantasy Football field.

– Ready to move on to the next big fantasy regular season but can’t remember when things got going last time? This blogger at FantasyHurler.com has the dates on which the big boys launched fantasy baseball each of the past two years. Looks like CBSSports.com is a solid bet to toe the rubber first.

– For those of us who can’t bear to be separated from the ups and downs of our fantasy football squads come Sundays (and most Mondays, some Thursdays and a few Saturdays) each fall, a convergence of computer, television and mobile phone will soon help keep you in touch (or is that out of touch) no matter what you’re doing.

– The initial report is about a month old, unfortunately, but Fantasy Sports Ventures has teamed up with the U.S. Olympic Committee to develop and distribute a widget aimed at promoting the members of Team USA for next month’s winter Olympics.

– This concept might come closest to embodying a real-life fantasy offering: A Florida businessman wants to build an actual football league around a reality television start. Players would try out to qualify for a spot on the fan ballot, and viewers would select eight teams to then compete for a title. The public would also serve as team owners. Sounds interesting

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

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.

A while back, Nando Di Fino wrote in The Wall Street Journal about how fantasy could be a key to growing the popularity of professional beach volleyball. Now, the tour just might be one step closer.

On Jan. 22, the Association of Volleyball Professionals — the country’s only pro beach volleyball tour — launched a new website with the help of Digitaria. According to the press release from Digitaria, “fantasy games” will be among the offerings of this new online presence.

The site is being rolled out in pieces, and the fantasy section doesn’t appear to be one of the pieces available at this point. The current lineup beyond the homepage consists of the tour schedule up through late February and a news section.

It’s a shame that the games aren’t yet available, particularly in light of the announcement. AVP events are taking place, and it would seem to be a good chance to try to take advantage of a little publicity. That said, it’s not exactly equivalent to the NFL kicking off in September with no central fantasy operators running. There will be time for interested players to catch on if the AVP can market properly.

Digitaria could offer some more help on that front, as the new volleyball site coincides with the introduction of a new sports division within the digital media company. Digitaria has experience with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Ravens among others.

The site itself is quite attractive and appears to be easy to navigate. We’ll have to see what comes of it as other new features are added. The press release seems to focus on enhancing the experience of the AVP’s fans, but if the new business partners hope to capitalize on the most recent Olympic gold medal for the U.S. women and satisfy a pretty decent list of sponsors — including Bud Light, McDonald’s, Nature Valley and Gatorade — they’ll have to grow that audience.

According to a Compete.com snapshot, site traffic for avp.com hovered around 20,000 at the beginning of last year before spiking to 70,000 in August — when the Olympics were going on. Afterward, things quieted back down.

The pretty Web pages are a start, but attractive, enjoyable fantasy games sure would help a lot more. Just look at what FLW Outdoors was able to do with its fantasy fishing contest last year.