Citizen Sports Sees Quick Response To New EPL Fantasy Offering

Citizen Sports Network Garners More Than 200,000 Registrants To Its Fantasy EPL Game

Citizen Sports Network said it has garnered more than 200,000 registrants of its new Facebook-oriented fantasy game for EPL soccer after just a week of availability. The company is projecting more than 1 million total players in the league by the start of the season next month, a total believed to rank second in size among all Premier League fantasy leagues behind the official operation run by the EPL itself. "We've definitely disrupted the EPL fantasy space, and have a real chance to help grow very significantly here in a short period of time," said Citizen Sports CEO Mike Kerns. "And the surging popularity of Facebook overseas only helps here." Roughly three-quarters of the registrants for the league, sponsored live in the U.K., while another 10% are North American-based and the rest scattered around the rest of the world. Citizen Sports is now planning similar soccer-based fantasy leagues for Serie A, Bundesliga and the Mexican League to launch sometime in '10. Meanwhile, Citizen Sports' NFL fantasy football league, operated on Facebook in partnership with Sports Illustrated, is also projecting more than 1 million players there this year. That is roughly double the mark from last year. The company additionally is readying an iPhone fantasy application that will be linked to Facebook through the new Facebook Connect platform (Eric Fisher, SportsBusiness Journal).

FSV SEEING EARLY SUCCESS: In DC, Tim Lemke profiles Fantasy Sports Ventures (FSV), which has "assembled a network of more than 400 sports-related sites" that in June drew more than 10 million unique visitors, "trailing only Foxsports.com, MLB.com, ESPN.com and Yahoo.com." The company, "largely through affiliate relationships," has "helped direct revenue to ultraspecific mom-and-pop sites that otherwise might never survive in the competitive sports landscape." FSV CEO Chris Russo: "I thought there was an opportunity to create an independent marketing and media company focused on fantasy sports. Part of the way I could make that proposition interesting for advertisers was to aggregate all of the fantasy niche sites that had really great content but weren't monetizing themselves all that well." Lemke writes FSV's "most important partnership might be with USA Today, which purchased a minority stake in the company last year and promotes FSV's sites online and in print" (WASHINGTON TIMES, 7/30).