• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 7, 2007

With this year's fantasy football season looming, CBS SportsLine.com has made several changes to its free- and subscription-based strategies.

Joining existing partner Toyota, T-Mobile has signed on to sponsor SportsLine's free service. To balance the sponsorships, CBS' sales team carved the site into halves, explained Ken Lagana, vice president of sales, CBS SportsLine.

"It's a session-based sponsor where Toyota will show up half of the time, and T-Mobile will show the rest of the time," said Lagana.

For SportsLine's subscription service, Anheuser Busch and GMC are back from last year. This season, CBS is introducing a new ad feature in which consumers activate expandable--and potentially interactive--ads when they mouse over the two sponsors' featured logos. (The consumer cost for premium services ranges in price from $14.95 to $499.95 per team.)

According to Lagana, ad rates at CBS SportsLine have gone up 5-20% from last year. Each of the sponsorships last the entirety of the season from September 2007 through February 2008. CBS SportsLine is also producing several original video initiatives this season. Following the first week of NFL regular season action, SportsLine will produce four original video programs featuring news, rumors and analysis, and hosted by Jason Horowitz and Amber Wilson.

Now a big business, fantasy games attract 15-18 million players each year, according to a recent report by eMarketer. In 2006, marketers spent $150 million on branding and ad deals with these online communities--a growth trend eMarketer expects to increase.

Earlier this year, Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated Group bought FanNation.com, a destination site for fans, fantasy game players, and bloggers. Time also acquired a minority stake in FanNation's parent company, Sports Technologies Inc., which it is using to boost the Web efforts of its various units.

Late last year, SportsLine.com entered into a partnership with TiVO allowing subscribers with broadband-enabled DVR to manage their leagues, check stats and scores, and watch highlights by remote control. This TiVO companion service was an outgrowth of the downloadable fantasy football application SportsLine had created for mobile devices.