RealTime Fantasy Sports announced this week that it has acquired league-commissioner site FantasyCitySports.com.

RTSports president Mark Hanna said his company heard that FCS — which, according to its site, has been doing the fantasy thing since 1984 — was looking into making such a deal. Although talks took several months, Hanna said that the process wasn’t too difficult.

“We were excited to work with them because our No. 1 method of ‘advertising’ is word-of-mouth,” Hanna told FSB.com. “We are confident that their clientele (who are VERY loyal) will be so satisfied with our site that they will tell their friends.”

According to Compete.com figures from the past year, that client base isn’t extremely large (monthly unique visitors peaked at just fewer than 2,000 in October). Of course, every segment of consumers you can add to your audience helps.

Hanna said that existing Fantasy City users shouldn’t see much change in their experience other than the host. He said that people can still log in through the FCS site and will be redirected to RTSports.com, where they should find their league settings transferred over.

“All the users need to do is input their 2009 fantasy football league schedule and they are set to go,” Hanna said. “Yes, there is some learning curve involved, but we feel it will not be extensive and the customers will love all the new features.”

Hanna also pointed out that the cost will be lower than what Fantasy City users paid in the past.

RealTime Fantasy Sports announced today that it has struck a deal with The National Football Post to run fantasy leagues for the pro football news site.

NFP launched back in August under the direction of former Green Bay Packers executive Andrew Brandt, and sporting contributors such as Michael Lombardi, who spent years in the Raiders’ front office. The site provided fantasy football content in its first season of existence, but this will be the first year of actual fantasy competition that it hosts.

Commissioner leagues will be available for $89.95 beginning in June, with Saints quarterback Drew Brees serving as the endorsement face for the those and the fantasy-specific content. As part of that deal, $9 from every signup will go to the Brees Dream Foundation, which helps fund cancer research and care for children.

“Drew Brees epitomizes the good that well-known personalities can leverage with their celebrity,” Brandt said in the announcement. “We are honored to have him as our spokesman for NFP Fantasy Football and hope to turn many children’s fantasies into reality in the process.”

Besides doing the normal smiling celebrity photos for the front pages, Brees will also reportedly provide audio and video downloads for NFP fantasy players — though the site doesn’t say just what the content of those will be.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association will dole out its annual industry awards later this month at its winter business conference. Among the categories to be recognized is Fantasy Commissioner Product. Voting ends Monday, Jan. 5, and the finalists are as follows:

• CBSSports.com Commissioner
• ESPN Fantasy League Manager
• Fanball.com Football Commissioner
• Fantrax
• MyFantasyLeague.com
• RealTime Fantasy Sports

Guess that’s why they call him a Footballguy.

The playoffs for the first edition of the Industry Insiders League wasn’t even close. After finishing the regular season with the highest scoring average, Footballguys.com writer Sigmund Bloom left the rest of us trying to find him.

In a system that added the total score for each playoff week to that average for the overall score, Bloom wound up winning by 123.37 points — or the same margin that separated second place from ninth.

“The success of Michael Turner, Matt Forte and Steve Slaton allowed me to have a top stable of rbs even though I only spent 1 of my first 4 picks on RB,” Bloom told FSB.com. “I averted possible disasters when Aaron Rodgers played through his shoulder injury and matt cassel got comfortable to preserve randy moss’ value.”

The league — organized by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, open only to members and hosted by RealTime Fantasy Sports — is an effort to foster more of a community feeling among fantasy writers.

“It’s the start of something we want to build, something we want to offer for baseball and football to start and maybe more sports in the future,” said FSWA President Mike Beacom. “It’s something else to help us grow our community — bond writers throughout the fantasy community.”

The league brought together 48 FSWA members in four 12-team division, each of whom fed their top two scorers and two top finishers recordwise into the playoffs. (I said “we” earlier because you’ll see in the standings at the bottom of this post that Team M. Schauf — a name I spent days developing — came in 11th in the postseason.)

“It’s a great chance to compete with the best and meet some of the talent in this burgeoning community,” the champ said.

01. Footballguys — Sigmund Bloom — 1018.44
02. Barracuda Sports — 895.07
03. FSP — Mike Jones — 873.09
04. FFT JFish — 833.20
05. FF Trader — Perkins — 832.90
06. Fantasy Football Times — 814.06
07. CBS Sports — 799.40
08. The Thundering Blurb — 796.70
09. RotoWire — DVR 771.36
10. Fantasy Football Trader — Jon — 765.63
11. Team M. Schauf — 738.16
12. TFS — Yeastie — 715.91
13. Fantasy Insights — Smitty — 715.34
14. The Scores Report — John Paulsen — 712.02
15. THE RotoExpert — 699.25
16. Team Jon Williams — 615.88

(Note: Beacom is also the publisher for SportsBuff.com, a sister site of FSB.com.)