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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."
...was vastly better than NFL Quarterback Club '98 on the N64, and it didn't have the team license. I wonder if Sega (NFL2k) or Midway(NFLBlitz!) will be able to pull the same trick off.
As if EA wasn't enough of an evil, soul-sucking monstrosity.
/. does it?
Can we save some time and just repost all of the "M$ is Evil" posts from the last 5 years and just replace Microsoft with EA in each? It really doesn't take much to bring out the knee-jerk reactions here on
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
first they refused to put out any sports games on the dreamcast, now they're threatened by the very franchise born out of that refusal... so what do they do? grab a monopoly.
i guess i won't be buying any more ea games until the day i die, same with microsoft products.
bastards.
Does the monopoly status of the NFL allow it to exclusively grant rights to its brand like that?
I had no intention of sharing it beyond that, but something about using actual NFL teams made me wonder about licensing rights. So I wrote to the NFL and asked them if I wanted to create a private, not-for-profit, not to be spread around game, could I use actual NFL team names? I figured it was a silly question, for why would they object. Probably you are thinking I was an idiot for writing under the universal principle of it's better to be ask forgiveness than to ask permission. Well, I was, but there you are. Anyway, I got a nice letter from NFL headquarters saying, "Thank you for asking, but no, you may not use actual NFL team names since we have entered into exclusive licensing arrangements with game companies." I have no idea which game company (probably early Atari stuff or some nonsense), but the idea of exclusive licensing of NFL names is hardly new. They've been raking in free money on that concept for at least twenty years now.
And no, I didn't change my program. Oh, I tried to make up names like the Comets and the Tigers, but it sounded too hokey, so I left in the real names anyway. NFL lawyers, you may arrest me now.
If EA gets their way, the NFL won't be the only sports license that they have exclusive rights to; they're also trying to get their hands on exclusive rights to the NBA and MLB (baseball). I think we can rationally guess that EA's attempt to buy up all the rights to ESPN (Visual Concepts) extremely strong sales this year due to the $19.99 price tag and excellent reviews on their games.
So basically, what's EA's response to a better product being produced for less money? Force their competition out by buying all the licensing for their particular brand of games.
sigs are dumb.
Football is boring.
Sega and other football game makers have a unique opportunity at this time to make really amazing College Football Games. There have been a few on the market but they don't generally have the features or support that the NFL games do.
There is a large playerbase that is actively followed. Gamers will still go where the best game implementation is.
Can you imagine how rich the online play would be with leagues composed of every college team would be? It would be fantastic!
Even if they don't go with colleges they could setup entire virtual leagues. Track stats of a 'fake' league online have a team for every state so that you can have large online leagues. Have web based fantasy games setup for when your at work. It could work and be compelling.
They could even stream nightly gaming updates to your xbox (ala machinma) using the ingame engine.
Maybe people will continue to buy EA's games but if Sega does it right, most football gamers will end up buying both, and perhaps spend more time theirs.
Competitors should design their products to accept any properly formatted database file of players and stats.
This would allow you to enter in your child's own Pop Warner teams to play against each other.
Of course, there's always a chance that some naughty person might start spreading around a database listing all the real NFL players.
That would certainly be tragic. But it's a risk we might have to take.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
I predict a huge upswing in the popularity of NCAA-based games.
Are you kidding? College is even worse. We at least can display the NFL logo on our *news* site. Not so with college.
The worst offender is college basketball. They've trademarked "Sweet 16" and "Final Four", and you aren't allowed to use those terms as section headings without paying licensing fees. Same goes for team logos.
Anyway this is more a videogame monopoly story than a strict sports story...
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I really like some of the games that EA produces. I'm not too into their sports division, never have been, but they have a track record of making some badass software. As for the hours, that's the games industry; love it or get out.
And you know, regarding EA Wife, I've never known a worker who got taken advantage of who didn't consent to it, either by their silence or their signiture. The manager who won't let you take a few days off because you're suffering from a nervous breakdown or your marriage is falling apart is a pretty piss-poor manager, and you should go over their head and explain that to their bosses. Hell, even Starbucks, which I assure you is a far greater evil than EA, has an anonymous whistleblower hotline. A lot of people expect their bosses to read their minds - if you work an 80 hour week without giving "feedback," they assume you're OK with working 80 hour weeks.
I actually thought that the fact that ESPN (Visual Concepts) dropped their prices to $19.95 would cause the competitors (EA) to follow suit. "Pretty good for the consumers - what could go wrong?" I asked.
I guess I've just been answered...
Now we have only once game with the offical licence - which will probably retain the same selling price to make up for the licensing fees.
I get what your saying, groupthink is annoying.
But this case is a little different. Actually a whole lot different. Now there is no competition. Competition, if you remember (or are you just trolling?) is what gave us freakin 20 DOLLAR VIDEO GAMES in the first place, for God's sake. That's a real, tangible difference in the weight of my wallet.
Now that's gone. So, yeah, I think the gamers who hang here have every right to complain about this one. You know the case could be made that it is, in fact, your post that's the knee-jerk comment.
Actually, I was equally curious about that. It turns out the press release wasn't available during initial trading hours. It turns out one of the major brokers just upgraded their outlook on EA. Cramer, that amusing media baron on MSNBC, wrote an article stating that something is up; usually brokerage firms are behind the curve, so to speak. Cramer speculated that it was an acquisition, being woefully behind the rumors. Ironically, if I'm reading his marketese correctly, he suggested buying shorts in the stock, which is exacly the wrong way to play the actual news.
See, the firm JP upgraded them, saying they expected significant gains in the next cycle (aka year). Cramer misinterpreted this as EA buying somebody, rather than EA fucking over their competitors quite well. In the short run, this deal brings a huge upside to EA; their competitors can't adapt this quickly to the changes. Five years is basically long enough to destroy a franchise that doesn't release. In fact, this entire thing reeks of insider information; clearly JP morgan knew something the market didn't.
The real test of the news will come on tuesday morning, when the entire market reacts to the event.
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Actually, this is a good opportunity to discuss what EA does once they corner a market. From about 1991 - 1997 EA NHL was ~THE~ sports franchise for any platform. High intensity action, good graphics, and marked improvement in gameplay year after year.
However, once EA finished dominating this sport, it branched out into others, gradually trying to recreate the success of the NHL games. As EA diverted its focus, this meant that the franchise began a gradual decline...alot of gimmicks were added in to justify new versions from year to year. PC Gamer discusses the decline of EA NHL in this month's issue.
I'd argue "Success" = "jumped the shark" for EA Sports games. There's no reason to believe that NFL Football under EA will not be the same. EA got the rights to the NFL based on the solid 2005 offering of Madden, and will probably futher improve the game for the first year or two in the deal. But I guarantee that the 2009/2010 Madden will be derivative garbage, EA maximising profits before the license comes due.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
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.
The only video games with Porsches are the EA Need for Speed and Porsche Unleashed series. All of which suck ass compared to the Gran Turismo series. I'm sure the engineers at Porshe must be pretty disappointed that the marketing folks crippled them from playing Porsches in Gran Turismo. Ugh. It's probably been as sore a time to be a Porsche employee as when they cancelled their GT Racing and reassigned that staff to develop their SUV.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It's just another licensing scam. That's where the big money in the NFL is made.
The NFL Player's Association (the union) holds rights to the likenesses and personal information of the players. EA pays the NFLPA a sum of cash and they get to use the real players' names.
The NFL itself holds rights to the names and logos and information about the teams.
Various corporate sponsors own the rights to the names of the stadiums.
Some teams are whor^h^h^h^hselling their -names- to corporations, too. This year the Chicago Bears sold their rights to (IIRC) BankOne, so that anytime the Bears are talked about in the media, they're supposed to be referred to as "The Chicago Bears presented by BankOne" or "BankOne presents the Chicago Bears."
I'm not one of those glassy-eyed fans that thinks sports have ever been pure and untouched but this is just shameful. There is no end to some peoples' greed.