EA Obtains Exclusive NFL Licensing Rights

Grub writes "EA has signed a 5-year agreement with the NFL that gives them exclusive rights to use NFL players, teams, and stadiums in their products. CEO Larry Probst, 'The five-year agreement will usher NFL fans through the console technology transition with new ideas and innovative game play experiences.' This is a crushing blow to competitors and an enormous victory for EA, who will undoubtably make sure everyone knows that only they have NFL players and teams come next year's football game advertising bonanza."

Repeat matches

[tepples]

There are what, 8 teams? How long can a season take?

Why do you imply ruling out repeat matches in a season? There are thirty teams in the National Basketball Association, and a season takes over 80 games. There are thirty teams in Major League Baseball, and a season takes over 160 games. There are nine teams in the Canadian Football League [www.cfl.ca], and its regular season is 20 weeks long [www.cfl.ca].

Re:Lovely.

[MEGAMAID]

you're going to get that same game shoved down your throats

Not quite, how is selling a video game shoving it down people's throats? You do realise you don't HAVE to buy it right?
Anyways, the same type of people who buy this re-hashed crap are the same type of people I don't care much for when they are ripped off.

When you buy ESPN NFL you support Sonny Bono

[tepples]

Of every dollar that goes to a movie-license game or another game licensed by a major movie studio, some cents go to lobbying for anti-consumer copyright legislation. For instance, the $20 MSRP of ESPN NFL 2Kx includes a royalty paid to ESPN and thus to its majority owner, The Walt Disney Company. Disney was behind the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act [losingnemo.com].

Re:Mod Parent Up

[iocat]

Actually, only MLB has an exemption to the anti-trust laws. The NFL does not. In fact, the USFL won an anti-trust suit against the NFL, although the damages awarded were small ($1, increased by statute to $3). You can read more, fan-written details here [thisistheusfl.com].

Re:monoply status of the MFL

[servognome]

The NFL does not have anti-trust exemption like Baseball. From ESPN.COM article [go.com]
Q: Why don't other sports have the antitrust exemption?
A: For 18 years after Toolson, in case after case, judges admitted that the baseball exemption was flawed, but it was never overruled. Exemptions for boxing, football and basketball were denied in the higher courts, while hockey and golf antitrust exemptions were also denied in the lower courts
In fact baseball's anti trust exemption keeps being dwindled away by congress
In 1972, Curt Flood's case -- which also challenged baseball's reserve system -- reached the Supreme Court and although it was again acknowledged that baseball's antitrust exemption was "an anomaly," the Court ruled that it is up to Congress to change baseball's antitrust exemption.
Further reduction of the anti-trust exemption could be coming up soon with the issue of steroids becoming an item on political agendas. Congress will look to pass regulations and possibly remove the exemption if baseball does not police itself steroid use.

Wall Street

[jnguy]

Electronic Arts (ERTS) traded up 3.38 during regular hours trading and went up an additional 3.07 during after hours trading. This is a 6.24% and 5.33% change in a single day. I guess wallstreet really cares who gets to hold on to the francise name.

Arcade style sport sims

[tepples]

By [sport simulations'] very nature they can't go beyond the rules of the game they're based on.

That sentence makes me believe that you never played NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, or any EA Sports BIG title.

Nice power play by EA, but there are options

[servognome]

Hats off to EA, they made a nice business maneuver out of nowhere.
Does it mean any other football game is dead? No, you could see a small studio come out with a football game that makes use of connected technology to let people create and download their own rosters.
Many independent baseball sims release their game without a licensed roster, but allow people to download 3rd party rosters where people add actual player/team names and stats.
There's always the possibility that it leads to the first baby steps of console game modding. Where there are roadblocks and money to made there is also innovation.

Re:This is just an opportunity

[TheLoneDanger]

Sega and other football game makers have a unique opportunity at this time to make really amazing College Football Games.

...There is a large playerbase that is actively followed.

Umm... I don't really follow US college sports, but can they actually use the names of college athletes? I thought that that wasn't allowed (although I could be thinking of college basketball or something).

They did this with NASCAR as well, in a way.

[Blaede]

Starting with last year, EA grabbed exclusive rights to NASCAR on all consoles up to 2008. Sierra had wanted to expand their NASCAR Racing series to more platforms than just PC, but with them being locked out of the NASCAR console market, they chose to not renew their PC license. This of course led to the shutdown of Papyrus, who's bread and butter was NASCAR simulations.

Despite EA's inability to put out a quality NASCAR sim title on PC since their first effort in 1998, there still is hope for a quality Papyrus styled racing sim platform to build NASCAR mods on. The main co-founder of Papyrus, Dave Kaemmer, has teamed up with Boston Red Sox owner John Henry (a rabid NASCAR Racing player) and created FIRST-Racing.net [first-racing.net]. This company will put out a game using the source code base from NASCAR Racing 2003, which they bought from Sierra. Hopefully this new game will provide fans of the renown NASCAR Racing series a base to continue racing NASCAR with a platform they have grown accustomed to.

Re:Recollections of my past

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's private, and not distributed, and not commercial, you don't need their permission.

But he DID distribute it. You give one copy of something to one other person, and that's "distribution". Don't confuse "distribute" with "publish".

Re:Advocating supporting Disney?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the end of capitalism. EA is a living example that competition doesn't have to exist.

Re:This is just an opportunity

[the_riaa]

Unfortunately, EA also has an exclusive on College Football for at least next year. EA also has exclusive on NASCAR and PGA. Sega has exclusive on College Basketball.

Okay troll, I'll bite.

Sega voluntarily decided not to continue their college football games for the 2003-4 and 2004-5 seasons after sales for the 2002-3 season (Sega NCAA Football 2K3). Sega has made excellent NCAA football games in the past (though not as good as EA's NCAA Football line in my opinion) but their NFL line has excellent play mechanics, and they already have a lot of the college info digitized (digital stadiums, fight songs, mascots, etc. from 2K3) so now's a phenomenal time to get back into the college football market. The NCAA is smart with their money (read that as "money grubbing whores"), so they're not dumb about creating rediculous monopolies and limiting the amount of licenses they give out. Now an exclusive with the BCS would be one thing, but let's remember that Sega/ESPN's game was the only one that had the Rose Bowl licensed back in 2002 [the other 3 BCS bowls were only licensed to EA].

EA does have an exclusive with NASCAR [gamespot.com], but honestly sales of NASCAR 2005 aren't nearly up there with the level of the pro football games. And we all know about the Tiger Woods games, but honestly the PGA license isn't even remotely required to have a successful golf game. For proof just see the excellent Links for the Xbox and Mario Golf for the GBA and GameCube.

Oh, and Sega does not have an exclusive on college basketball. EA's March Madness series and 989's NCAA Final Four have been going strong for years, though ESPN's College Hoops 2K5 is the best of the bunch in my opinion. And like somebody else commented before, no NCAA games are allowed to have player names in them, since such an act would constitute an endorsement for which the player would have to be compensated - thus making them a professional and violating NCAA amateur rules. Ever wonder why last year's best player is always the cover boy of the new NCAA game for this year? [Carson Palmer, Josh Childress, Drew Brees, Eric Crouch, to name a few from years past].

Re: Solution for competitors

[smitke]

You can already get "real" rosters for college games for Xbox and PS2. Plus people go in and update the NFL rosters to include things such as Ricky Williams retiring right before the season.

ActionReplay (Xbox) has 43 "Power Saves" for EA's NCAA 2005 which include 13 different rosters [codejunkies.com] for Div 1A.

If you don't want to pay for their memory card you can download their software and use a USB memory stick or your own [xbox-scene.com] Xbox [xbox-scene.com] Memory [llamma.com] Card [xbox-linux.org].

Re:Just when I thought EA couldn't get any more ev

[24-bit Voxel]

Seems like all a competitor has to do is make the ability to name your own players and this is easily sidestepped. I guess it would be a minor pain in the ass but die hard fans would probably even like it. (Changing the names of thier least favorite players -> Jerry Lice.)

Soon, they are opening a 'location' in China to outsour^H^H^H^H^H^H^H tap into that market as well. One thing I have noticed about them is that they have many layers of management, who really are business people and know nothing about the game field. Stepping on too many toes can definately backfire, and all it takes is for people not to buy the games when they come out during the hollidays.

I am miffed at them for completely destroying the offline Ultima series. Ultima 9 shipped with a bug that basically made the game completely unfinishable. A month or two later, when they finally got around to patching it, it was found that using the patch would make all your previous save games unusable. Bummer.

After this game created SERIOUS backlash in the Ultima community, and EA closed down the Texas location and moved the Origin team to a building at EA main in Redwood City. Rumor has it *wink wink* that they are very unhappy in the Bay area, and have been basically relegated to the lowest level building there. Appearantly, in EA they organize the floors with names to donate rank (sorta). There is the Tiger floor, etc etc. and the Origin team is considered at the bottom of that food chain internally. (Sad because I always loved thier games.)

However, this is the reason I too have boycotted EA games, and will never buy them again. Its a shame too, because by doing that I am also slighting a company that I had previously been a huge fan of.

Back to my orginal point however, simply creating the ability to choose team colors and pick names will sidstep this new deal that EA has made and will probably even add more to the game. EA doesnt understand that realism does not equal fun, and would not even think of it as a positive for the other company.

Vox

Re:Ahhh. . . innovation

[xecl]

Yet you see them add innovation all the time. Take for instance the ESPN Football line. They added in innovations in the form of the VIP profile, allowing you to setup how you want your players to practice, letting the computer trade with itself, etc... Perhaps try playing them before talking about them.

Re:why blast EA?... go after then NFL..

[pappy97]

Why don't people actually READ the article?

It was the NFL's idea to go exclusive (and I assuming NFL Players Assoc was on board for this too), and the NFL invited the bidding war.

If Sega/Disney had the cash, they could have received the exclusive license and Madden would be in big trouble.

Don't blame EA, they were not seeking an exclusive license, the NFL said "All or nothing," and EA shelled out the necessary cash to keep its cash cow alive.

Re:failed in Auto Racing, too.

[PygmySurfer]

EA pulled off an exclusive licensing deal like this with Porsche. That's why you can't drive cars named "Porsche" in Gran Turismo. They have some imaginary model that matches them in specs, but they don't look much like a real 911.

Actually, the "imaginary model" in GT is a Ruf, and it's not imaginary at all. Ruf [rufautocentre.com] "enhances" stock Porsche's, and resells them. I think they change so much during the conversion that the car is technically no longer a Porsche.

Don't look much like a real 911? Does to me [ign.com]. Well, as much like a Porsche as a Ruf does, anyway.

I'd never heard of that EA exclusive license for Porsche. If it's true, that's unfortunate.

Re:failed in Auto Racing, too.

[pieszynski]

Indeed, RUF is classed as an auto manufacturer not a tuner in their home country of germany.

Sweet motors too - 600BHP narrow body 911's and in the 80's i think one held the production lap record at the nurburgring.

As for EA exclusively licensing porsche cars, i'm not so sure, as they definately appear in project gotham racing 1 & 2. Pehaps EA have PS2 exclusivity?

Yay! Drugs!

[The-Bus]

Midway actually dropped out earlier this year.

Midway has hired the writer of the show "Playmakers" to develop a new title, Blitz: Playmakers. The game will feature everything the NFL hated about the TV show, including drug use, and off-the-field habits the NFL likes to pretend never happens.

According to an interview earlier this year with Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, an NFL spokesperson confirmed that they were through working with Midway: "Midway has been quietly dropped in a 'mutual decision' as an NFL video game licensee after years of controversy over the level of violence in its NFL Blitz game."

When IGN contacted Midway about the rumored Blitz: Playmakers, a spokesperson confirmed the game's existence and told us: "Enough of the 'No Fun League'...it's now time to talk about and prepare for the game the NFL wouldn't let anyone make... Blitz the way it should be played."

Story source from IGN Sports [ign.com].

Oh, yeah, it's gonna bomb.

Don't blame EA.

[boodaman]

It never ceases to amaze me when people blame someone who buys something for being able to buy it.

As many concerns I have with EA, you can't blame them for buying something someone was willing to sell.

They didn't force the NFL into this agreement. The NFL sold it to them. If you're going to rant about anyone, rant about the NFL, because if the NFL was thinking long-term, they wouldn't issue long term exclusives to game companies.

Without seeing the contract, there's no way to judge, but if it had been me negotiating the deal, I wouldn't have done an exclusive. Or if I had, I would have tied EA's exclusivity to some benchmark of innovation over time. Sounds iffy, I know...my point is that the NFL suffers long term if they grant EA an exclusive and then EA does a crappy job because they get lazy and just want the money. Thus, if EA does a crappy job, they lose their exclusivity...to keep their exclusive, they have to agree to make the game "better" each year ("better" being a matter up for debate).

If EA does a crappy job a year or two from now, that's just going to disappoint fans, and if there's one thing a sports league should NEVER do (or want to do) is disappoint fans. Even video game fans.

If anyone is to blame in this deal, its the NFL (not that EA is unblemished). The fact remains that the NFL had something to sell and EA bought it. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.