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.

You have to love it when a league fully embraces new technology. The National Hockey League (NHL) is going full-bore with social media and is finding new ways to engage its fans. The NHL is hosting a fantasy hockey pick’em game tonight that can only be played via Twitter.

Playing the game is pretty simple. To enter, fantasy players tweet a reply to @nhl with a predicted winner for each of today’s fifteen hockey games plus provide a guess of the league’s total penalty minutes for the night, and put the special hashtag #nhlpick15 in the tweet. The prizes are tickets and NHL GameCenter Live. Not too shabby for tweeting, and costs the league practically nothing to provide. It is a win-win for everyone.

Whenever launching a new fantasy game, the least amount of education you have to do, the better. With this game, most people understand pick’em leagues, and twitter users understand twitter. While this game may appeal to a limited number of fans, it is really simple game for those fans to play. Simplicity is what makes fantasy games work and grow.

As a side note, this game is a product of Vayner Media, who is also working the New York Jets on some social media activities. Do not be surprised to see Vayner Media all over the social sports media scene in the future (as if they are not already).

Additional Coverage:
The NHL’s Latest Social Media Push: A Twitter Contest