FANTASY SPORTS DARK HORSE GOES LONG

Former National Football League new media executive Chris Russo is scoring with fans and advertisers in the big-bucks world of online fantasy sports, as his year-old company, Fantasy Sports Ventures, claims a bigger network of rotisserie fans than the NFL, Fox, Sports Illustrated and AOL.

According to a recent report from Nielsen Online data, the company has vaulted into the top five fantasy football operators on the Web, just behind heavyweights Yahoo!, ESPN, and CBS SportsLine, with over 1.5 million monthly unique viewers.

Backers of the privately funded FSV, which also covers a broad range of other sports, include Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee; Ray Mines, former COO of McDonald’s; Peter Carfagna, former general counsel of IMG; and Trace Armstrong, former Chicago Bears player and president of the NFL Players Association.

FSV is a collection of 85 smaller fantasy sports Web sites, including 40 related to football, that are being packaged for advertisers including Wal-Mart, Sprint, EA Sports, AT&T and Topps. FSV boasts around 5 million viewers.

“More and more brand marketers are saying, ‘How can I get into fantasy sports?’ ” said Russo, who estimates there are over 150 independent fantasy sports sites. “It’s a fragmented market. . . We’re giving advertisers a one-stop shop to reach these engaged users.”

A handful of sites in the FSV network, includingTheHuddle.com, FreeFantasy.com and FantasyPlayer.com, are owned and operated by FSV. The rest are affiliates that sign advertising revenue-sharing agreements with FSV.