With the races that lead to the Kentucky Derby, WinStar Farms announced the launch of its Fantasy Derby contest. Fantasy players create a stable of 15 horses and earn points as the horses earn money in the run-up to the Kentucky Derby. The games runs from February 13 to April 17, which is when the run-up to the Kentucky Derby occurs.

The winner of the fantasy derby receives roundtrip airfare and accommodations for two to the 2010 Kentucky Derby plus tickets to the Kentucky Derby itself (you’ll have to bring your own floppy hat, though). The top ten players will receive prizes from WinStar. This fantasy game is not likely to have a ton of entries, so even if you are not a horse racing expert, you may be able to get yourself up to speed and win some cool prizes.

One of the coolest prizes I have ever seen for a fantasy game is the ability to name one of WinStar’s horses. WinStar Farm is farm for horse racing and thoroughbred horses. I like it when fantasy games provide prizes that are unique to their sport or to the company sponsoring the game.

Congratulations to WinStar Farms on its new game and good luck on its launch.

There is only one game left in the NFL season (sorry, the Pro Bowl does not count) and all eyes will be on the Saints and Colts in Miami. Some fantasy players are clinging to the last bits of the extended fantasy football season as they complete their fantasy nfl playoff leagues.

If you are hoping to get one last bit of fantasy football during the Super Bowl, I came across a couple of options for fantasy Super Bowl games that you may want to look into.

• RotoPlay’s Fantasy Super Bowl – Top Prize of $1000 and a total prize pool of $1500. First entry is $24.95, next is $19.95, and the fifth one is free.
• Fantazzle’s Super Bowl and Pro Bowl Game – Okay, I lied, we cannot completely ignore the Pro Bowl if you want to play Fantazzle’s Super Bowl game. Currently, free leagues all the way up to $100 leagues are available.

Of course, you could just do a Super Bowl Pool.

How is your Friday going? Mine has been quite delightful so far, to be honest. I have been catching up on reading today, and I came across a few articles that you may just enjoy:

• Things to Watch for the 2010 Fantasy Football Season, Part One (Fantasy Football) – If you thought it was too early to start thinking about the 2010 fantasy football season, you are sorely mistaken. Not only are some fantasy players contemplating who they might want to draft, there is at least one player out there is developing strategies and determining trends.
• Rating the Rankings in Fantasy Football: CBSSports.com Is the 2009 Winner (New York Times) – Determining which rankings to pay attention may be one of the hardest things that fantasy players have to decide before the season. Sara Holladay, aka the Fantasy Football Librarian, painstakingly rated 48 different sets of rankings.
• Darius Rucker is Obsessed with Football (ESPN) – This is mainly just a random reference about fantasy football, but Darius Rucker plays fantasy football. He also sports a Fantasy Football Legend T-Shirt. Too bad he’s a Dolphins fan in real life.

I hope you had a good day. Keep checking back here for some big news next week.

In January 2009, OneSeason announced that it closed a financing round of $3.5M. In December 2009, OneSeason shut its doors, $3.5M later.

The $3.5M investment was made by Charles River Ventures which is a firm with a very successful track record (heard of Twitter? yeah, that’s in its portfolio). It was definitely not for a lack of experience or trying that it failed.

Here is why OneSeason failed: Building a fantasy sports business is really hard. Building a multi-million dollar fantasy sports business is really, really hard. Throw in educating fantasy players to a whole new way of playing fantasy sports and the added pressure of investors who invested millions of dollars, and the odds have gotten incredibly slim.

OneSeason is yet another company that has failed to fully develop the fantasy sports market as a stock exchange game. ProTrade, now Citizen Sports, started with a stock market game, and has since shifted its attention to traditional fantasy games integrated into social marketing. RotoHog has also shifted its focus from its stock exchange game to producing white label games for a wide array of customers. This concept of an exchange is good in theory, but just does not get enough traction to support these businesses in reality.

In my article How to Start a Fantasy Football Business, I advise fantasy business to spend as little money as possible. The main reason why is that getting fantasy players to play a new game is hard. Fantasy players are creatures of habit and like playing what they have always been playing. If you are going to spend $3.5M on developing a fantasy site, you better have investors willing to wait five to ten years before they start seeing real return on their money. The less money your fantasy business needs, the longer and better chances it has for success.

Good news for OneSeason players, according to its site, is that whatever money you have left in your account you will be able to withdraw.

Even though I am not at the FSTA winter conference this time around, that does not mean I do not have some good tidbits for you you as to what is occurring. Through the miracle of modern technology (in this case, Twitter), all sorts of fun tidbits are coming out from various sources.

• RotoWire cleaned up at the Fantasy Sports Writers Association annual awards by winning six awards.
• The producers from The League killed as keynote speakers. Also, the show was able to sell advertising space based purely on the show’s subject content (fantasy sports).
• The big media companies won lots of the FSTA awards, with ESPN leads the way. This is slightly unusually, as a number of the smaller fantasy sites tend to get a respectable haul of hardware.
• Some FSTAers were partying with Lil’ Jon on Tuesday night.

To track the conference, just search FSTA on Twitter.

XML Team announced late last night that it has acquired Fantasy Sports Scores. Based out of Canada, Fantasy Sports Services is a provider of fantasy games and fantasy content

In the press release announcing the purchase of Fantasy Sports Services by XML Team, XML president Alex Karben said “This addition gives us even more quality sports content to offer our expanding client base, and helps us meet the needs of both our existing and potential clients in various media arenas.”

In other words, with this new acquisition, it gives XML Team the ability to be more than just a statistics provider and offer turnkey solutions. This acquistion gives XML Team the ability to get on par with its main competitor Stats, which offers complete turnkey solutions for its customers.

This is a solid move by XML Team. The next steps for its business were probably to sell, to grow by capturing additional market share of its current products, or to grow by expanding its product offerings. Ultimately, this is path that will make XML Team a much more valuable company.

Since this purchases is designed to compliment many of XML Team’s product offerings, Fantasy Sports Services employees are expected to stay on in their current capacities.

Congratulations to Alex and his team on their new purchase, and to Fantasy Sports Services on a successful sale. I wish the two groups luck as they grow to become one company.

Taking a break from regular posting to share where I stand on the AFC Championship Game. I really have not been this excited for a football game in a while, and it is all that I have been thinking about today. With that, I would like to give you the chanting stylings of Fireman Ed

By the way, that clip was posted by YouTube user “IndianapolisColt.” Even Colts fans are Jets fans.

That’s Kerplookee, as in the sound a golf ball makes when it drops into the cup after a well-executed putt. Kerplookee is also a new fantasy golf site with a fantasy golf game. It’s a simple salary cap game where you get $20 million to spread across as many as ten golfers. Score points based on how well your golfers finish in the money.

Kerplookee has an interesting strategy for the start of its game. It started play in the first weekend of January, but those are practice rounds. The game officially starts on February 11. It allows for fantasy players to get used to the game before the start of the season. The downside is that players may drop-off before the season actually starts. The free game is broken into sessions that gives fantasy players a fresh start every few weeks. In addition, Kerplookee also has a pay fantasy game planned that will kick off with the Masters in April.

According to founder Chuck Fridinger, the site has signed up over 500 members since its launch in December and that over 96% of players are actively playing. With a few more promotion events planned, he expects to have a strong number of sign-ups by the time its season starts.

Congratulations to Kerplookee on its launch, and good luck to it as it navigates the fantasy waters.

You thought it was bad that CBSSports.com had given up on fantasy golf, but the PGA Tour has essentially abandoned fantasy golf by reducing its PGA fantasy golf to a really large Yahoo! Fantasy Golf group. Really? That is the best the PGA can do? While leagues like the NFL and MLB are investing heavily to make their digital departments the destination for news about their sports, it seems the PGA Tour is going in the exact opposite decision.

Fantasy sports are known to boost fan engagement, and the PGA is really missing the boat on this. Although this decision was made before Tiger Woods‘ recent issues, the lack of a truly engaging fantasy option gives them one less weapon to combat what are surely going to be pathetic ratings until Tiger comes back.

While fantasy golf is not the behemoths that fantasy football and fantasy baseball are, the number of players is in the hundreds of thousands of players. That is a large enough audience that PGA really should care just a little bit more. I understand not developing the game yourself, but the fact that it is not even bothering to create a true white label fantasy game, it is just disappointing.

In case you are interested in playing the game, it is broken into winter, spring, and summer segments. Weekly prizes are some Nike ONE Vapor golf balls, segment prizes are Nike VR drivers, and a grand prize of a trip for two to a 2011 PGA Tour event.

Last year, I told you about how MLB, using technology, was creating new statistics. Now, MLB is partnering with Bloomberg to distribute this new data to fans, fantasy players, and professional sports teams.

At first, I thought this was such an odd relationship. Bloomberg and Sports? Really? No, Seriously? But, the more I thought about it, I realized it was brilliant. Bloomberg built its name on doing amazing things with financial data, and the presence of Bloomberg terminals in financial offices is completely ubiquitous. Bloomberg knows how to analyze and deliver data. MLB has tons of historical statistical data in addition to the new statistical information it is creating. But, it does not have a good system in place for analyzing and delivering this data. Rather than going with one its usual or past partners, MLB looked way outside the box and partnered with Bloomberg.

Bloomberg Sports is offering a fantasy package that is very reasonably priced. For $31.95, you get a draft kit and in-season tools (also available individually) that will provide you tons of statistical data, analysis, and unique insight that only MLB and Bloomberg. Unfortunately, while the graphics look cool, the package can only be pre-ordered and no demonstrations are available.

For Bloomberg, this is an opportunity to tap into a totally different market. With the recent issues on Wall Street, the need to diversify away from its core offerings probably makes sense. But, what is unique about this diversification, is that they diversified by staying true to a core competency–content delivery.

MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) has really outdone itself with this new offering. Hey, NFL, are you listening? You might want to give Bob Bowman at MLBAM a call and see what he can help you create.

I cannot wait to see Bloomberg Sports in action.

Additional Coverage

• MLBAM, Bloomberg team for data products (Sports Business Journal)