A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– STATS executive vice president Steve Byrd says that companies are beginning to learn how to “leverage their brand and interact with their customers using unique sports content and games.”

– John Hermansen of Global IP Solutions thinks that the fantasy league experience would benefit from the addition of voice over IP capabilities.

– Not only is there an outlet for you to play fantasy supercross, but you can win an actual race-used bike.

OntheRecordSports.com wants to know how well fantasy players can anticipate performance each weekend, rather than who can build the best lineup.

The new site, which officially launched its beta phase on Monday morning, affords users the opportunity to predict how individual players will perform in upcoming contests and challenge others to do better. It also allows users to create profiles, upload other personal content such as videos and talk trash to each other.

The site also offers community games, including contests for the Super Bowl and NCAA tournament that purport potential top prizes of $5 million.

“We felt like the time was right for a fresh take on fantasy,” On the Record Sports chief executive Mark De Philippi told Sports Business Journal. “The big boys have pretty much cornered the market on commissioner-style games.”

According to SBJ, the venture is backed by investment capital in the seven-figure range, and the prizes are insured. OTRS has partnered with STATS LLC in this offering and was founded by former Upper Deck executive Jamie Kiskis.

“We’ve been doing fantasy for a long time and now have the opportunity to really pick and choose our partners in this space,” Stats senior vice president of sales Greg Kirkorsky told SBJ. “These guys came to us with a really fresh take and a way to get at the casual fantasy player in a meaningful way.”

According to OntheRecordSports.com, Kiskis — a San Diego State alum — developed the idea on the Aztec Talk message board in response to boasts of other posters who often claim to have “called” athletic results before they happened.

STATS LLC announced Wednesday the acquisition of Israeli technology-development company SportVU, a move it says will add quite a bit to STATS’ offerings.

Most notably, SportVU collects positioning data on all actors and objects involved in an athletic contest and applies algorithms to produce helpful tools such as speed profiles and measurements of athletes’ fatigue. We’ve all heard about competitors who play faster than their 40-yard dash times, but this purports to be the first actual measure of such a phenonmenon.

For scouts and coaches that will have access to this data, it could mean more accurate and evolving player evaluations and should assist in game planning. Observers of the sports — including fantasy sports analysts — will have new ways to look at performance and different aspects to factor in when projecting future production.

STATS not only views the new capabilities as enhancing the product delivered to its customers in sports leagues and sports media, but also sees new revenue opportunities. Sponsors, for example, could pay to attach their brand to on-screen graphics that display the new measurements.

“This is a strategic initiative designed to create new business opportunities and greatly expand existing partnerships in all sectors of our business across the globe,” STATS CEO Gary Walrath said in the press release. “SportVU’s unique technologies bring new dimensions that enhance the sports experience for fans, while creating compelling new revenue platforms for our clients.”

Election watchers might have seen SportVU’s technology at work on CNN when an interview subject was virtually transported into the broadcast studio to speak with Wolf Blitzer. The company was founded in 2005, and all “key principals” will take on roles under the broadened STATS umbrella, according to the release.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– STATS LLC reached a deal with the PGA that makes the company “an official provider of in-progress hole-by-hole results for all PGA Tour, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour events.”

– In a display of just how hard it will be for them to deal with the off-season, some of the guys at Fantasy Baseball Generals have already mocked a draft for 2009. (As I write this, the 2008 regular season still has one game to be finished.)

– LeagueSafe is partnering with Bancorp to in the payout system for leagues that use its fee-collection service.