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TagsNew Jersey sites form part of independent network
BY JERRY MILANI
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
The football season will "unofficially" kick off this week, not just with training camps opening, but also with fans starting to dig down and assemble all the facts and figures for their own personal football squad – with fantasy football.
Even in a down economy, fantasy sports is a booming business, with industry analysts projecting that 15 million people, largely younger males, participate in fantasy, with as many as 11 million in fantasy football alone.
The amount of dollars invested by brands as well as money used to build sites and gather information is estimated in the billions for the industry, with projections continuing to go up as fantasy takes root even more outside of its traditional home in North America.
The major online sports sites – ESPN, Yahoo, Fox Sports – are the brands that many players go to for sign-ups to create their leagues, but often times those sites all have the same basic information, leaving a void to be filled by specialized sites for independent, detailed inside information.For those fans, both the ardent follower and the casual fan looking to get a little extra to build his team, a site that has gained some traction is the Fantasy Players Network, a consortium of over 400 sports-related sites (with at least 15 tied to New Jersey), most of them independent voices, created by a team of digital sports specialists as the home of all things independent for fantasy sports.
The New York-based company, Fantasy Sports Ventures, has gained market share on the bigger names in the business, with over 10 million views a month, making it among the fastest growing sports sites on the Web and putting it in fifth place overall in traffic, trailing only Foxsports.com, MLB.com, ESPN.com and Yahoo.com and ahead of other "name" sites like SI.com, CBSsports.com, AOLFanhouse.com and even NFL.com.
FSV was founded in 2006 by former head of NFL Digital Chris Russo, who helped introduce the NFL to the value of fantasy sports but saw a bigger play by uniting all the independent voices of sports as both a one stop shop for brands looking to get into the digital sports space and as a way to give these independent sites an opportunity to become financially viable for their operators.
"The fantasy space continues to grow, and football remains the biggest fantasy sport, especially in August when fans are drafting their teams for the new season," Russo said recently. "FSV continues to lead the way in fantasy sports by compiling the best independent voices and distinctive specialty sites. We are very excited about where the industry is going and how we can give brands and fans the best of all possible worlds in the digital space. "
In addition to the statistical sites giving the fantasy player every detail on trade rumors, injuries and camp updates, sites like New Jersey-based RealFootball 365.com, as well as The Huddle, KFFL, Football Guys.com and others provide original content and a behind the scenes view from those dedicated to covering football exclusively.
FSV also now has a host of team-specific sites that are among the most viewed on the web, including BigBlue Interactive, following every move the Giants make, SportingTruth, which follows the Eagles, and JetsInsider.com which covers just information on the Green and White.
On the college side, FSV recently formed partnerships to aggregate some of the biggest independent school-specific sites as well, including three Notre Dame Sites – UHND, ND Nation, and Blue and Gold – as well as Tiger Droppings (LSU), BuckEye Planet (Ohio State), True Blue Kentucky, Trojanwire (USC), Duke Report, Tiger Land (Auburn) Ute Fans (Utah) and Big Red Nation (Nebraska) and many others. Overall they have over 50 of the top school-specific sites under their umbrella, with more coming as the fall approaches.
All that content in one place is great news for advertisers like Coors, Gillette, Subway and others, who can go to FSV and build online marketing programs that speak directly to the dedicated fan in the digital space.
Even with all the football content, especially at this time of year, FSV also has a host of baseball and other sports specific-sites (fantasy NASCAR or golf anyone?) as well as some of the better independent news sites like The Big Lead, run by former New Jersey resident Jason McIntyre, as well as relationships the official websites of the ATP Tour and Harlem Globetrotters and others, making it one of the largest aggregation sources for sports information available.
But this time of year, much of the talk and interest is all football, and for those getting ready to tee up their fantasy team, FSV is the place millions will turn to.
