Think you know how to pick stocks or just like investing based on the stock’s name? J.P. Morgan has a new Fantasy Fund Manager game for you! The premise is simple–build as big and successful a portfolio as possible. Make lots of fantasy money and end up winning real money, while learning a little bit about the market in the process.

J.P. Morgan is putting some significant muscle behind this year-long competition, with a top prize of £35,000 ($58,000), making it one of the larger free fantasy games on the market. There are additional cash prizes along with Amazon gift certificates and iPhones.

This is yet another example of a fantasy game being used to market to a different audience. The concept of fantasy games is so mainstream that it becomes an easy means to market your product.

While this is a United Kingdom based game, I find the idea of a fantasy fund manager game sort of funny in that wasn’t-treating-real-money-like-fantasy-money-what-got-us-into-this-economic-misery kind of way. Or, maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, if you are interested in, I recommend checking it out.

Additional Coverage
JPMorgan Fantasy Fund Manager competition: Choosing the right plays for better performance (FT Adviser)

By harnessing the real-time nature of Twitter, Fantasy TweetZone lets fantasy players know who the most talked about fantasy football players are at any given moment. Right now, Larry Johnson’s release and uncertain status is topping its chart, as it should be. Fantasy TweetZone is an advertising tie-in with Sprint‘s ad campaign where it totals everything that is going on in its network; Fantasy TweetZone totals up everything fantasy football related on Twitter.

I love the concept of this site because it gives fantasy players easy access to which players have significant developing news. Monitoring this site on a regular basis may give fantasy players an edge when a no-name player emerges on the chart, indicating that something is happening with that player. Also, it allows fantasy players to see how others view the same athletes. For example, clicking on Marion Barber’s TweetZone page right now brings up a number of trades that fantasy players are considering for Marion Barber. If you are a Barber owner or lust after having him on your team, you can get a feel for what might be a fair trade offer for Barber.

Unfortunately, the site has a bit of noise in its relevancy, such as being unable to differentiate jokes about Michael Vick and Reggie Bush from real fantasy news. Also, the most popular players tend to be the most talked about players, creating additional noise. However, for a first edition of this tool, I think this is an acceptable noise level. Besides, who still does not enjoy a good Michael Vick joke these days?

This is an excellent use of Twitter. Federated Media, the company that launched the tool, has taken public domain data and analyzed it to bring value to fantasy players. Currently, the site is only monitoring fantasy football, but with the site branding just as Fantasy TweetZone, don’t be surprised if this gets expanded into other sports.

Well done!

Note: Ads for this site may or may not have run on this site a month ago when I had some ads up from an ad network. I never saw the ads myself, but allegedly they were running.

Fantasy sports know no borders, and today I will take you to Italy. Serie A Live is a fantasy soccer league focusing on the top Italian soccer league, the Serie A. The site is the brainchild of Serie A-lover Vince Cullotta and is one of the very first independent fantasy Serie A sites out there, with only Yahoo! and ESPN among the big fantasy sites playing in the Italian soccer market.

My favorite part is that Serie A Live has created a challenge for next season with its Serie A Champions League. The top 30 teams will compete in a champions league next year. This little nuance will keep players playing once they are out of the hunt for the top spot. Three months into the Serie A season, of the 219 players signed up, about 179 actively playing, which is an impressive percentage. In addition, the site also features live scoring, which is very high-end feature and keeps fantasy players regularly engaged.

A point about the internationalization of fantasy sports. Think back to about 1990 when the fantasy industry was full of little niche sites creeping up everywhere. Ultimately, those sites merged, emerged, failed, were acquired, and became part of the fantasy sites that we grow and love today. Well, for the rest of the world, it is 1990 all over. Except, this time around the new fantasy companies have the playbook from the past twenty years. There is no reason to make the same mistakes and to not do what you not works.

When I see a new site like Serie A Live investing in the features that are essential to running a successful game, like live scoring, and ways to innovate the game, it gets me excited. Cullotta is investing in making a top product. Once the market demand for fantasy Serie A grows (it will, just as fantasy EPL has grown), Serie A Live will be in a great position to capitalize and gain those new customers.

Congratulations to Vince on the site launch, and good luck with Serie A Live!

This just made me laugh. I love fantasy sports because you can have fun with just about anything. Fantasy SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) is for the legal buff or law student that takes an interest in the court system. This game allows users to act as the “Tenth Justice.” Surprisingly, the scoring for Fantasy SCOTUS is very intuitative and natural. Players need to determine how the court will side on a particular case and which justices will vote which way. Score points according to how close you are to the actual decision.

This game may actually take off as a niche fantasy game for law schools as a way of teaching constitutional law and understanding the dynamics of the Supreme Court.

As an aside, I think it’s hysterical that the Fantasy SCOTUS has to use a “.net” domain name, because someone actually already owns the “.com” domain name. In fact, the .com is available for $397, if you are really interested in purchasing it.

Congratulations to Fantasy SCOTUS on its launch, and good luck.

With the hype building in Australia at Tiger Woods playing the Australian Masters, now is your chance to get playing with the PGA Australia’s fantasy game.

While Tiger is guaranteed $3 million for just showing up to play the Australian Masters, you get the opportunity to compete for some lesser, but awesome prizes. Winning this free fantasy golf will net you a brand new set of Srixon clubs and golf bag. To play, select a roster of twelve golfers within a $6 million salary cap. The fantasy golf game is built around Australia’s summer of golf of November and December, which makes for a quick fantasy season.

If you have an itch for fantasy golf and cannot wait for the Sony Open, the traditional opening of the golf and fantasy golf season, you may want to check out this new fantasy golf game from the PGA. Entries are due Wednesday afternoon (Thursday morning if you are in Australia).

From the “I couldn’t make this up if I tried” category, you can now get weekly fantasy football sleeper picks from three bikini-clad beauties in a hot tub. Hot Tub Sleeper Picks is a new video series offering fantasy advice.

Hot Tub Sleeper Picks is clearly tailoring to the mostly male fantasy football audience, and some find them offensive and/or chauvinistic. The videos are well produced, and the fantasy advice is backed up with rationale. Again, no one will watch for the fantasy advice alone.

Below is the Week 5 Sleeper Picks video, where the ladies nailed one of their three sleeper picks, after going two for three the week before.

Fut11.com plans to launch itself in the near future. While it is getting ready to launch, it is looking for a few good logo ideas. In fact, it is currently hosting a logo contest for the a fantasy soccer logo. The designer of the winning logo will in a prize of $295.

All I can tell you about Fut11.com is that the domain was registered on September 3, 2009, and the company is based on Portugal. The name is short and sweet, and makes sense for the product.

I do like the idea of making you logo a public contest, because it helps generate some pre-launch buzz for the site. Personally, I like the logo on the left.

Good luck to all designers!

If you have visited Fantasy Players lately, gone is its circa-2001 CBSSports.com looking website. Now, Fantasy Players is a consolidated Twitter feed for some of the Fantasy Players network’s fantasy football expert. In addition, the fantasy advice is now powered by the McDonald’s Dollar Menu.

Fantasy Players has always been a showcase for Fantasy Sports Ventures’ (FSV) network of affiliates. This site change actually reduces the amount of information available to fantasy players as it only showcasing content from six fantasy sites, instead of the dozens and dozens of FSV affiliates that were showcased on Fantasy Players.

Fantasy Sports Ventures is attempting show that it is innovative by having a Twitter-themed fantasy site, but this site make it seem like they are just following the latest buzz word. Any Twitter user would recognize the site as just multiple Twitter feeds that he could just follow on his own. What is really odd about the site is the fact that the twitter @fpntweets account (which is actually an interesting feed) has entirely different content than what you see on the twitterized Fantasy Players.

This is not the first time Fantasy Players has changed itself for a sponsor. During the 2009 March Madness, Fantasy Players redirected to Bobby Knight’s and Billy Packer’s Survive and Advance site, which was sponsored by Irish Spring. Expect this current rendition of Fantasy Players to be a temporary move as well.

Note: I previously worked at Fantasy Sports Ventures from 2007 – 2008

From the founders of Hubdub, comes a new fantasy sports site FanDuel, which is geared around daily head-to-head fantasy games. Hubdub is an interactive site where users predict the news, so fantasy sports is a good tangent for the company.

To play FanDuel, fantasy players select the players that they think will score the most fantasy points for that day. At this time, only fantasy football and fantasy baseball are supported, but expect that to change if FanDuel grows. Currently, players can play for free, but the game’s big allure is the ability to play for cash prizes, with players able to enter a cash league for as little $5. For each $5 entry fee, a player can win a $9 prize. He who scores the most points wins the game and gets paid instantly. If you sign-up and add funds right now, FanDuel will also give you an additional $10 bonus.

Short-term fantasy leagues are definitely a growing market, as evidenced by the recent launches of SnapDraft and Instant Arena. FanDuel is keeping their game simple by focusing on head-to-head match-ups, and making game play very straightforward.

Congratulations to Hubdub with the launch of FanDuel, and good luck with the launch.

Additional Coverage:

• News Betting Site Hubdub Launches U.S. Fantasy Sports Games (PaidContent)
• Brand New Fantasy Sports Game – brought to you by the Hubdub Team! (Hubdub)

Last week, in my article MySportsBroker Launches Another Fantasy Sports Stock Market Game, Pro Sports Exchange, I erroneously wrote that Pro Sports Exchange (PSX) is a fantasy stock market for trading athletes. PSX is actually a fantasy stock market where fantasy players manage a portfolio of sports teams, and not athletes.

As I said earlier, while fantasy stock markets sound like good ideas, none of them have transcended into the fantasy mainstream. When I asked Denise Eckert, PSX’s Vice President for IT Marketing, why will PSX’s stock portfolio game will succeed, while many have failed with similar concepts, she replied, “It’s more realistic and more interactive. We believe that players are ready for a new game.”

I am now more convinced than ever this will be a game that can’t find the broad audience it craves.

Good luck to PSX as it fights for fantasy success.