I’m not the slightest bit an expert on acquisitions. However, I have to think a key factor in many cases must be the ability of the smaller company to bring with it an established good or service that the larger firm would’ve otherwise had to build from scratch.

That, of course, was the primary motivation for this week’s announced deal that saw Yahoo! buy Citizen Sports.

“When we really sat down and looked at what we were doing in the social space and where we were trying to get, we ultimately decided that what they already had is superior than what we would have been able to do in the short term,” Yahoo! media vice president James Pitaro said in this article from PaidContent.org. “We haven’t been as active on Facebook as we should be. It’s a top priority for our media businesses.”

Aside from seeking to enhance its social-network presence simply because of the massive audience involved, Pitaro said Yahoo! sees Facebook and similar sites as competitors for fantasy players. That doesn’t refer to the fantasy applications hitting social networks these days, but rather the limited leisure time that is so often spent on such pages.

Reaching that audience is important for bringing in new players who might not otherwise come to Yahoo! fantasy games on their own.

The other key area of this deal is smart-phone apps. Yahoo! has put out its own iPhone products for fantasy football and fantasy baseball, efforts that will reportedly be combined with Citizen’s offerings going forward. The acquisition, however, brings the multisport application Sportacular under the Yahoo! umbrella.

“It’s fantastic,” Pitaro was quoted as saying, speaking of a concept that Yahoo! had discussed pursuing. “We don’t have to go out and build this thing.”

On the other side, the Paid Content report says that Citizen was not looking to sell but realized that it had “created shareholder value.” The article also says all 30 of Citizen’s employees will join Yahoo! once the deal is finalized.

As expected, Yahoo! announced Wednesday that it had signed an agreement to buy San Francisco-based Citizen Sports.

“Sports has been among the earliest online categories to experience rapid social proliferation, and the combination of Citizen Sports’ leading products with our world-class sports experience on Yahoo! Sports is a win-win for sports fans globally,” senior VP Bryan Lamkin of Yahoo!’s Consumer Products Group said in the official release.

Mike Kerns, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Sports added: “Citizen Sports was founded with the intent to enable fans to access news, scores and fantasy games on the platform of their choice. We look forward to becoming a part of Yahoo! and bringing our social experiences to their 600 million users around the globe.”

As FSB.com mentioned in the previous report, Citizen came to market as ProTrade back in 2004. The company moved away from its central stock-trading game (now closed) in the past several years to focus on developing applications for social networks and smart phones. That effort included the November 2008 acquisitions of competing companies Sport Interactiva, FantasyBook and Sportacular.

The Yahoo! release says that Citizen brings applications for social networks Facebook, MySpace and hi5, and for the iPhone and Android — applying to sports from the prep level to the pros.

Yahoo! says the deal is expected to be finalized in the second quarter of 2010.

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

– The Sports Business Journal has planned for a March 1 release an “In Depth” report on fantasy sports. According to its announcement: “We’ll call upon our team of fantasy experts to find out which segments of the business are growing the fastest. We’ll introduce you to the key players in this space and outline some of the products that have gained the most traction with consumers.”

– European fantasy games site Sportsbox.com has added a salary-cap contest for the second half of the Champions League season. It’s interesting to note that Champions Fantasy Knock-Out is a pay-to-play game.

– We all know how important it is these days to get our marketing messages out there via social media. This week, eMarketer is running a series on how to do so properly.

– Many football fans may have forgotten about Anthony Gonzalez soon after he went down with a knee injury in Week 1, but fantasy owners who drafted the Colts wideout as a No. 2 receiver sure didn’t. CBSSports.com senior fantasy writer Jamey Eisenberg wrote a feature over the weekend on Gonzalez, who will be an interesting fantasy case heading into 2010.

– It’s just one guy’s opinion but still interesting to note that this staff writer for Connecticut’s New Britain Herald dubs MLB.com the best site on the Web. Let fantasy baseball season officially begin.

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A long overdue roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– As part of the recent merger with Liberty Entertainment, DirecTV has assumed control of Fun Technologies — the parent company of Fanball, CDM Sports and Fantasy Cup.

– The Fantasy Action Sports League has launched a feature that allows competitors in its fantasy surfing contests to submit their own scores within 1 minute following a surfer’s ride. After a minute, the average of all user-submitted scores is compiled and applied. It sounds interesting for surf fans who know (or at least think they know) their stuff. It also sounds like a feature that could be often and possibly easily manipulated. Fortunately, it probably won’t be an issue for mainstream sports, which tend to rely on more concrete stats.

– Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown says that “Very rapidly the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world.” Although there’s really no competing console on which to play fantasy sprots, maybe the shift could mean more people (particularly younger people) online looking for things to play.

– Sports social-networking site tourlegends.com has launched a free Fantasy Cricket application. Still mostly an oddity to American sports fans, cricket seems to be steadily building its online fantasy presence.

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