The title sponsor for Euroleague’s Fantasy Basketball Challenge is SportingBet. What is surprising is that the sponsor of this game last year was Nike. What caused the switch?

Does this mean a big advertiser like Nike has given up on fantasy? or just European fantasy basketball? or did NIKEiD have its budget cut? or could it be that Nike was simply outbid by Sporting Bet? The bigger issue is that a blue-chip sponsor was replaced by an online sportsbook. I think it is more one of the latter reasons, but is not entirely impossible for the former reasons. In terms of brand power, this is definitely a step backwards for Euroleague’s game.

Last year, NikeID very prominently sponsored the fantasy challenge. In case you are not familiar with it, NIKEiD is a site that allows customers to completely customize and order a pair of Nike sneakers, which makes fantasy basketball a good fit for sponsorship.

As a cultural aside, the idea of a sportsbook sponsoring a league’s official fantasy game would never happen. The professional leagues in the United States fight legalized gambling as much as they can and would never let a sportsbook sponsor its games.

Anyway, just something I noticed that I thought you might be interested to know.

Lots of really good articles have been written in the last week or so, and these are a few I thought that I would pass along to you. Go ahead, take a read:

• From RotoWire: Usually the argument is whether fantasy football is better than fantasy baseball. But, Kenn Ruby dares to argue both sides of the “which is better, fantasy football or fantasy basketball” argument. Check out Why Fantasy Football is Better Than Fantasy Basketball and Why Fantasy Basketball is Better Than Fantasy Football
• From Open Sports: Daniel Dobish of Open Sports writes about ten reasons to play Fox’s Fantasy Quick challenge. Expect he never mentions that Fox Sports is a major investor in Open Sports and that Open Sports actually built the game for Fox (see: Fox Sports Outsources Fantasy to Open Sports). It is perfectly fine to promote your products, but let users know you are, because it is sort of illegal now, according to the latest FTC guidelines on advertisements.
• From USA Today: Looks like ESPN is looking to bid for March Madness, which has been on CBS Sports for the longest time. Honestly, I could careless which network broadcasts the NCAA Tournament, but if this means the end of March Madness on Demand, there will be some very upset fans (and happy managers).
• From Bleacher Report: I love this diatribe about how fantasy football on the whole needs to really start including real defensive stats. In Walter Kirkwood’s Man Up, America: It’s Time for Defense in Fantasy Football, I love how he asks if I even knew about Patrick Willis‘ phenomenal rookie season, and then he read my mind by daring me to name his team. I had clue (it’s SF), but the article is an entertaining read.

Don’t forget to come back here often for more fantasy goodness.

I told you previously about how FanDuel Launched Fast Head-To-Head Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball and how it scored with a twitter fantasy football game. Now, FanDuel expands its line of fast fantasy sports to include fantasy hockey and fantasy basketball.

In both of these new fantasy games, fantasy players build a roster of players within a predetermined salary cap. The fantasy team with the most points wins. FanDuel’s games are pay-to-play and offer fantasy fans the chance to draft a new team everyday and win prizes. One of the beauties of FanDuel’s game is that it only requires two people per league, so FanDuel can almost always ensure that its players play in a league, and FanDuel makes its profit off of that league. If FanDuel is able to get enough teams playing on regular basis, then it will mint money.

FanDuel is one of a number of sites that is focusing on the instant fantasy games market. There is a lot of potential for these fantasy games to grow as fantasy players tire of their under-performing teams during the season and do not want to wait until next season for a shot at drafting a winner.

With today being another lazy Sunday, I thought I would point you to some articles that you could lazily glance over when you are not busy stalking your fantasy football team on the your league’s real-time scoring.

• Ten reasons why … you read fantasy columns (OPEN Sports) – Does it count as reading a fantasy article when you are reading an article about why you read fantasy articles?
• 10 Things To Do During The Bye Week (Predominantly Orange) – Clearly this Broncos fan does not play fantasy football, because the fantasy football fan never has a bye week. The list does contain some valid things that you might want to do in case you do need to take a week away from fantasy.
• The Number, The Feeling, The Line (Hardwood Paroxysm) – DJ Turtleface reflects on how he seems to be able to destroy his fantasy basketball league annually, despite continuous improvement by other league owners. This year he may have to take his riskiest strategy–depending on rookie production. He seems happy with it, but let’s see how he feels about it in three months.
• Draft Day Dilemma (Study of Sports) – A fantasy basketball owner struggles with his first round pick and ends up having his decision made for him through a strange twist of events.
• Fantasy Issues: Time to pick ‘a team’? (Sporting News) – When you have multiple fantasy teams, you tend to pick a favorite one, don’t you? It’s okay to admit it, we all do it.

Enjoy these articles while I continue contemplate why people continue think that Brett Favre has fantasy value.