“We may not make it into the top 3 in year 1 of this, but certainly expect to be there in a short period of time.”

That is the stated expectation of Fox Sports Interactive Senior VP of Operations Jeff Husvar in Tuesday’s Sports Business Daily report of the fantasy deal struck between Fox and OPEN Sports.

According to the report, the multiyear partnership will begin with the coming football season, include baseball in 2010 and extend to other unspecified sports beyond that.

The football offerings will include a standard commissioner-style setup, a commissioner game that allows “real-time” substitutions during NFL games and the “shorter-form” Fox Fantasy Quick Challenge that sounds like it will probably fit into the growing stable of weekly fantasy games.

“We’re looking to make a very big statement to the marketplace,” Husvar told SBD. That statement will begin in earnest Tuesday night’s MLB All-Star Game, when the new fantasy setup is due to get a 20-second spot on-air. Husvar also reportedly said he is talking with fellow Fox executives to figure out how to better integrate fantasy into the network’s studio offerings. (Apparently he’s not satisfied with Brian Baldinger, Troy Aikman and co. picking one “fantasy stud” before each game.)

As for the plan to join the “big three” of mainstream fantasy sites within a year, that seems like a pretty lofty goal. Yahoo, ESPN and CBS Sports all sit way ahead of Fox in that race with gaggles of engaged, returning customers.

The one area that could gain Fox a foothold is if the in-game substitution model works out. Nearly all of us play in formats that require lineups to be set before kickoff, so this newer concept could be intriguing. Of course, we here at FSB.com would like to reserve true judgment on the concept until we learn more about it. SBD’s story says that each football offering will provide free-play options, though it’s not clear if Fox plans to build pay products as well.

No financial terms were announced for the deal, but the partnership is reportedly designed to end up giving Fox part ownership of OPEN Sports. It’s also worth noting that Husvar and OPEN Sports founder Mike Levy were once colleagues at CBSSportsline.com. (Levy, of course, founded Sportsline before CBS acquired it.)

(Click here for the official press release.)

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– Sports Business Daily reported that December was the best sales month in the history of the NBA Store in New York City, including the online outlet NBAStore.com. Could this mean that money awaits in the NBA fantasy market, which has been tapped into nowhere near as deeply as football and baseball?

– Before finally coming out on top in ESPN’s Gridiron Challenge, David Wegner of Alexandria, Minn., started to feel the pressure of the fight to get there.

– With the Mercedes Benz Championship teeing off the 2009 PGA season, Golfweek has added four staffers to its group of Fantasy Aces that is now seven strong.

– Rallypoint announced a deal with Samsung on Thursday, whereby it will produce a fantasy sports widget for the 2009 line of Samsung HDTV’s.

The 10th Annual Sports Media & Technology Conference, presented by the Fantasy Sports Association, Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily, took place Thursday and Friday amid a tough economic landscape.

Leaders from around the sports media field met in New York City to discuss and learn about the way some top companies are dealing with the tough times and to find out what might be on the industry’s horizon.

Ted Kasten, founder of Advanced Sports Media — which develops the Draft Analyzer fantasy draft software and PlayerSearch, the first sports-focused search engine — was in attendance and shared his notes from the forum with FSB.com:

The economy was obviously a huge focal point. There were three related themes discussed throughout the conference:

1) Companies need dual revenue streams during the economic downturn: Companies with dual revenue streams (advertising revenue plus subscription revenue) will be in much better shape during the economic downturn than companies that rely solely on advertising revenue. Sports, in particular golf, will be hit hard because of their dependence on financial firms and domestic car companies for sponsorships. Jimmy Pitaro of Yahoo pointed out that they have always been tempted to provide all of their fantasy tools, such as the Stat Tracker, for free but never did as those premium products continued to grow every year and are currently growing faster than their free services. Considering the change in online advertising, that was a smart move to retain the premium features.

2) Major sporting events such as the BCS moving to cable: Broadcast networks that rely solely on advertising revenue are unable to compete with ESPN and their powerful dual revenue streams. Demonstrating this was ESPN’s recent acquisition of the rights to the BCS games from Fox. Fox was unable to match the $125 million/year bid from ESPN (Fox currently pays $82.5 million/year for the rights to the BCS). This will be the first time these games will not be available on free broadcast TV.

3) Flight to Quality: Panels repeatedly stated that a “flight to quality” will make the smaller companies feel more of the pain from the downturn in advertising than the larger companies and brands.

The first and third items should be of particular interest to companies within the fantasy industry. “Flight to quality” is a phrase said to originate in stock trading, and it refers to taking investments out of risky ventures in favor of the safest possible entities.

For the purposes of our industry, it could mean advertisers, sponsors or even investors veering away from smaller fantasy outfits or new ventures and throwing their money behind the familiar names.

Any lack of funding from those avenues feed directly into the need for dual revenue streams. Obviously, if a fantasy site can’t pay its way on advertising dollars alone, it has to find other ways to stay viable. That, in turn, brings us to the whole free vs. subscription quandary that not only faces many a fantasy site but all sorts of content and service providers around the Web.

If you’re reading this site, you’re probably already facing these issues, but maybe you’ll find it a little heartening to know that such things are on everyone’s minds throughout the industry — even the big boys.

Who: Howard Kamen
What: Partnership Editor, USA Today; member, FSTA board of directors

So, what’s a partnership editor? Does he handle the wedding, engagement and anniversary announcements? Is he in charge of making sure everyone in the news room works well together?

Actually, it means that Howard Kamen is the point person regarding all the content for USA Today products that isn’t produced in-house. He seeks out and recommends opportunities for the company, handles the contract work with outside content providers and works as the “intermediary” between those providers and the various editorial and other departments. Along with the daily paper, this means overseeing work for USAToday.com, the IT and design departments and Sports Weekly.

Although it doesn’t allow him to share in the joy of those announcing their engagements, it does sound like a pretty good way to combine training and experience in journalism and law.

“I actually wanted to be a sports agent and went to law school with that in mind,” Kamen says. “However, after a pair of paid internships — one at a very small sports representation firm and another at an extremely large athletic management company — I realized representing athletes wasn’t for me. I didn’t mind the contract/endorsement work, but the recruitment aspect was, shall we say, a bit ethically challenging for me.”

Rather than go the Jerry Maguire route, the graduate of University of Virginia and Catholic University law school joined Sports Business Daily as a staff writer for about a year before landing at USA Today in the sports department for the website.

Kamen spent about 11 and a half years roaming around that department, beginning as a content developer before overseeing the Major League Baseball content for a while and then spending a little more than half of his dot-com stint as deputy managing editor. That role involved him in the oversight of the department’s daily operations and introduced him to the partnership work that has now become his central focus.

In addition to his other duties in the sports department, Kamen was in charge of fantasy coverage before taking over his latest position. That work included overseeing partnerships with fantasy content providers and even pitching and co-writing the paper’s fantasy football column for a while.

“I’ve always thought we had such potential,” Kamen says. “Probably anyone who started playing fantasy sports in the ’80s or early ’90s used the USA TODAY sports section to crunch their stats by hand, right? But, despite our efforts otherwise, we kind of let the ESPNs, CBSs and Yahoos of the world slip past us.”

Kamen says that his efforts, along with those of some of his colleagues, have helped to turn things around.

“Our sports department now has a fantasy sports desk with a designated fantasy sports editor and a staff of writers,” he says. “Plus, we’ve made some solid strategic partnerships, including a new radio deal for (hopefully) a nationally syndicated fantasy sports program, to enhance our presence in the space.”

If he seems to talk about the fantasy stuff passionately, it’s because he has played, loved and been involved with the games for years. Kamen traces his participation in fantasy baseball and football back about 20 years and puts himself among that aforementioned group of players who had to scan the sports pages and score their leagues by hand. Today’s league commissioners should think twice before complaining about the hassles of running a league. No matter how often your leaguemates whine about the fairness of trades, at least you don’t have to mail out the weekly scores and transaction reports the old-fashioned way.

Kamen doesn’t just remember those days of fantasy, he can trace a direct link via a baseball league and a football league that he says have been running since the late 1980s. In addition to his eight leagues between those two sports, Kamen has branched out over the years.

“I’ve expanded my participation to include the usual suspects: fantasy NBA, NHL, NASCAR and golf,” he says, noting that baseball remains the most rewarding because of the length of the season and the amount of knowledge necessary to win. “I’ve also been a member of a fantasy ACC basketball league for the last 10-plus years with a group of friends from school.

“And now that we’re all getting a little older with families, some of us … have formed a pair of parent-kid leagues — one baseball and one football — where the parents and kids compete against each other.”

Although fantasy is no longer part of his duties at USA Today, Kamen has managed to stay involved in the industry. In February, he was elected to the board of directors for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

“I believe the FSTA — and what it stands for — has great promise, and I wanted to be a part of shaping the direction of this growing industry,” he says.