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.

According to this article on DailyFinance.com, some major-media fantasy producers report that women are consuming their content and games in ever-increasing amounts.

Frankly, there’s a lack of clarity in the numbers reported, but here are some highlights from the story:

– ESPN.com says average minutes spent on fantasy pages by female visitors rose 7 percent in June. (Unforunately, we aren’t told whether that’s over June 2008 or May 2009.)

– ESPN estimates that 18 percent of the audience for its online fantasy content is female and that its year-over-year female fantasy audience grew in the “low double-digit percentages” in 2008.

– Yahoo! Sports’ David Geller estimates that 12 percent of the fantasy players on his site are women.

The numbers seem to be in line with Fantasy Sports Trade Association-sponsored Ipsos studies that have pegged the female fantasy audience somewhere around 20 percent (though a much smaller portion of the group that actually spends money on fantasy content and games).

The rest of the Daily Finance article jumps around quite a bit and confuses a few things (the FSTA and the Fantasy Sports Association, for instance), but here are a couple of other noteworthy quotes:

– RotoWire president Peter Schoenke: “Yahoo will face tough competition from Fox which has some ’serious building blocks’ such as broadcasting NFL games.”

– Geller, of Yahoo! Sports: “Fantasy sports tend to be recession proof.”

Talk about going after a niche market.

MySerieA.com, which launched back in late January, knows exactly the kind of fan that will frequent its site. That’s because the new portal is devoted to the Italian soccer league that appears in its domain name. Some might find such an approach limiting, but founder Vince Cullotta sees a need in the marketplace.

“I think part of the problem with fantasy Serie A is that there are all of these sites out there that are doing it just to do it,” Cullotta told FSB.com. “The fantasy games are stripped down and not very exciting to the average fan. Serie A fans have nowhere else to go so they play because the options are limited.”

With an entire site devoted solely to Serie A — or Lega Calcio, for our Italian readers — Cullotta hopes to give his audience more than they might get from existing games such as those available via Yahoo, ESPN and Ole Ole.

“Our focus is the Serie A and nothing else, which sets us apart from other fantasy sites,” Cullotta said. “We want to raise the bar for Italian fantasy soccer.”

Along with the game, the site offers forums and a blog devoted to the league. The game itself offers 24 different scoring categories and provides live scoring, and the accompanying player news comes from one of the industry’s most respected sources in RotoWire.

“We’ve been impressed with Vince’s vision for his game and think it’s going to take off with a growing and untapped U.S. soccer market,” RotoWire president Peter Schoenke told FSB.com. “RotoWire has expanded our soccer coverage to include all the world’s major leagues, so it was a natural fit for us to work with My Serie A.”

Of course, no matter how strong the effort, there figures to be a limited audience in this country. The American appetite for all things soccer beyond the youth level has proved to have its boundaries.

On the other hand, the wonderful thing about the Web is that a site’s access is not limited to its country of origin (at least not around these parts). To that end, Cullotta says he has plans to extend the reach overseas in the coming years, specifically into the United Kingdom and Italy.

That kind of audience should come with a healthier appetite.

As we reported last night, 17 candidates are up for election to five spots on the board of directors for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. As you might have noticed, four of those people are board incumbents. That might lead one to wonder about the remainder of the current board.

Well, association manager Justin Cleveland informs FSB.com that Paul Charchian (LeagueSafe), Jeff Christiansen (FF Toolbox), Jim Corelis (STATS), Jeff Coruccini (Fantasy Football Starters), Kelly Grogan (Athlon/Grogan’s), Scott Higgins (EchoStar), Howard Kamen (USA Today), Ted Kasten (Advanced Sports Media), Peter Schoenke (RotoWire) and Charlie Wiegert (CDM Sports/Fanball) are in the middle of their terms and not yet up for re-election.

The lone current board member who has decided not to seek another term is Dan Cypra of Fantasy Fanatics.

The new term, which runs for three years, will start on April 1 (and we’re not fooling).

See main story for the list of candidates.