Citizen Sports, which has been in the news in recent months for developing a fantasy football game for Facebook, has purchased three of its competitors in search of a larger share of the market.

In recent weeks, the company has bought Sport Interactiva, FantasyBook Inc. and Sportacular.

Sport Interactiva is based in Connecticut and, according to its website, seeks “to bring the experience of sports content (videos, photos, news, etc.) and fantasy sports gaming to social networks like Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace.”

FantasyBook is a Bay Area neighbor of Citizen Sports and created the first “full-featured” fantasy sport offering on Facebook in the spring with its Fantasy Baseball 2008. The company’s site also lists a fantasy football application for Facebook and three other fantasy baseball offerings.

Sportacular is a Tampa-based company that develops sports applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

“It was more efficient in each of these cases to go out and look to acquire these companies in order to build out our market position,” Mike Kerns, Citizen Sports founder and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal.

As part of the deals, Sportacular founder Jeff Hamilton and FantasyBook CEO Jon Brelig will join Citizen Sports’ staff.