Slashdot Mirror
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."
I thought if there was one site I could escape sports talk, it would be Slashdot. Now I get to read endless posts about football being soccer, etc.
I've been waiting for a CFL game to come along.
Random and weird software I've written.
...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.
Well, football fans, I hope you liked Madden 2005, because you're going to get that same game shoved down your throats with updated rosters for the next five years.
EA needs to die.
"The five-year agreement will usher NFL fans through the console technology transition with new ideas and innovative game play experiences."
Because monopolies (this is a monopoly of sorts) always lead to innovation.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
I predict a huge upswing in the popularity of NCAA-based games. Or maybe arena league ;)
...and play six days per week.
Oh well, I will just be the SF 48ers the computer can be the GB Hackers. Oh Bred Feasly you SOB run!
I'm sure this has nothing to do with Sega's almost superior (and 30 dollars cheaper) ESPN football debuting this year... I see someone's posted that since Madden's the best game anyway, it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, since being the only game in town doesn't exactly provide incentive to improve- or do anything but offer gamers the same thing every year with barely cosmetic changes.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
This would be a perfect time for the XFL to come back! Yaaay!!
Hacker Media
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.
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, and its regular season is 20 weeks long.
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.
you know.. so far there are about 30 (level 1+) comments and I don't see anyone bad mouthing the NFL for this. I can't say I blame EA for going after this agreement. It's in their best interest and will give them a huge edge come next season. Who wants to play an NFL football game where you can't be Michael Vick and the rest of the Atlanta Falcons (or whoever). But what about the NFL for even LETTING this agreement happen?! If you are going to blast EA for going after a monopoly why not blast the NFL for supporting it?! I'd think it would be in their best interest to let more companies get licenses. How many people out there own both NFL 2k5 and Madden 2005?! I know my friend does... I know many people who did. So the NFL got double license fees from one customer. That's GOOD for the NFL. Also, what about all those people who are anti-Madden, either out of principle (for EA's employer practices) or because they just don't like the gameplay as much as NFL 2k5 (or others) like myself. I own 2k5 because I don't like Madden.. the graphics aren't as good, the gameplay is weak. If this deal had been in place last year the NFL wouldn't have gotten ANY of my money, whereas this year they got some from me purchasing NFL 2k5. This just seems like a bad choice for the NFL. It's a shame too because I get some serious football feaver in Aug and Sept and now next year I'll be back playing my old 2k5. Next year the NFL won't be getting any of my money from licensing deals.
Grease & Counterbalance
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.
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 .
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I actually thought that the fact that ESPN (Visual Concepts) dropped their prices to $19.95 would cause the competitors (EA) to follow suit. "Pretty good for the consumers - what could go wrong?" I asked.
I guess I've just been answered...
Now we have only once game with the offical licence - which will probably retain the same selling price to make up for the licensing fees.
Electronic Arts (ERTS) traded up 3.38 during regular hours trading and went up an additional 3.07 during after hours trading. This is a 6.24% and 5.33% change in a single day. I guess wallstreet really cares who gets to hold on to the francise name.
Cyberball 2072 was the only football-type game I ever found to be fun.
C'mon! Giant robots? Playing football? My pals and I spent many a quarter on that, beating each other senseless.
Screw EA and the NFL. No giant robots, no care.
By [sport simulations'] very nature they can't go beyond the rules of the game they're based on.
That sentence makes me believe that you never played NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, or any EA Sports BIG title.
It's time for a remake of Tecmo Super Bowl. Really, that was the greatest football game ever made.
Can we save some time and just repost all of the "M$ is Evil" posts from the last 5 years and just replace Microsoft with EA in each?
Actually, M$ should be replaced by €A.
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.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Well, football fans, I hope you liked Madden 2005, because you're going to get that same game shoved down your throats with updated rosters for the next five years.
EA used to be like this with the FIFA Football (soccer to you Americans) licence - I'm pretty sure every FIFA game from 1996 to 2001 was the same damn game with just the rosters updated - they've got better since, though, and have been genuinely adding new features to every release since 2002 (mostly because a large section of the market began to realise that International Superstar Soccer, while not having the official licences, gave a superior gaming experience provided you didn't mind the names being a bit off). They saw the market was no longer stagnant and they had a serious competitor, so they started adding interesting features.
Provided one of the competitors takes it upon themselves to make a game that's more realistic than EA's offering gameplay-wise, a large chunk of the market will start to switch, official licence and rosters or not. Provided a competitor comes in with a worthy product, EA won't risk letting their marketshare slide, so don't bet too strongly on them letting this one stagnate. Let's call it a wait-and-see, shall we?
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I read this PR twice, convinced that I had read this wrong or that it was some kind of a hoax, thinking "can this mean what I think it means?".
This is bad. So very bad. If this is true (see above), this will essentially kill the football franchises of Sony/989 Studios, Sega, and Midway. It doesn't matter how good a game is -- without the license to use the official teams and players, you are toast.
The immediate effect of this will be price. When Sega slashed it's sports line to $20, EA followed suit by dropping it's sports titles to $30. Think that will happen when EA has no competition? Quality will be the next to go -- what will be EA's motivation to innovate? When SCEA first released NFL Gameday for the Playstation, EA cancelled it's Madden because of its inferrior quality. They came back the next year with a much-improved offering. Without compeition, what will stop EA from shoveling out complete garbage? There wasn't a lot of year-on-year innovation in the first place, but now I'll be surprised if they do little more update the team rosters.
Oh, and doesn't easpouse's husband work for EA Tiburon? I guess that situation isn't going to improve. "Where else are you going to work? Sega? Bwah hah hah hah!". Guess I better figure out how the BCS works... damn you EA!!!
Translation from EASpeak (TM):
"Hi. Sega? Remember that $19.99 price undercut? Yeah. F*** you."
This seems wrong to me. Do we really want a world in which every aspect of human activity is licensed or paid for? Sports is culture and community; we shouldn't commercialize that space.
I mean, what's left to commercialize after this? Is the next frontier to commercialize transactions within families? Honey, a roll in the hay will be $500, and do take note of the Coca Cola logo (a licensing exclusive) on the bra before your remove it. If you want a hug from your kids, that will be $5 a hug. (Well, sadly, we may be pretty far along down that road already.)
Papyrus's last NASCAR game was 2003, before EA got the NASCAR exclusive license. We've been stuck with NASCAR Thunder series, and its nowhere even close. By by NFL2K and Visual Concepts.
You could probably buy the rights to the XFL really, really cheap.
Who wants to play an NFL football game where you can't be Michael Vick and the rest of the Atlanta Falcons (or whoever).
NFL owns the team names and logos, and that's it. Has NFL Players Inc made a decision about this? If NFL Players Inc doesn't reach the same exclusive license, then all the other developers will be free to enter into contracts with NFL Players Inc, and their games will still let players be Michael Vick and the rest of the Atlanta Football Team.
The $ in M$ doesn't just signify childish accusations of greed. Microsoft started out as a developer of BASIC interpreters for home computers. Notably, Microsoft developed the "Applesoft" BASIC interpreter in the Apple II Plus through IIGS computers. In that early line-numbered era of BASIC, the name of every string variable ended in a dollar sign. Thus, M$ was a valid name for a string variable, and 10 LET M$ = "Microsoft" was perfectly valid BASIC code. Sometimes people have to make such abbreviations to fit things into Slashdot's short comment subject lines.
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. 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.
"Michael Vick and the rest of the Atlanta Falcons"
Should read: "Michael Vick"
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
CANADIAN Football League!? What next -- hockey in the United States?
You know, everytime I read about the hockey teams of Florida or California, I die a little inside.
You can't take the sky from me...
I've never known a worker who got taken advantage of who didn't consent to it, either by their silence or their signiture.
Hey, she was asking for it!
As for the hours, that's the games industry; love it or get out.
Neat, so they only are taken advantage of because they agreed to, and if they don't: get out.
Super, just... super.
You can't take the sky from me...
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe. If you've played it, either one or two player, then you know what I'm talking about.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
If Sega/ESPN had been offered the same deal, do you think they would have hesitated even one second?
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
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!
Hockey, there's no competition because it's not that popular. Look at TV coverage. Even ESPN would rather put college basketball up against pro hockey. The reason no one competed against EA was because no one wanted to for such a small market.
The truth is, at $20, ESPN was putting the hurt on EA. EA's entire business model depends on $50 a game. With the reviews given to ESPN, the average teenager with $20 in his pocket is going to buy ESPN and tell EA to go ____ themselves, especially when EA stays at $50 a title.
ESPN put out a good product, competed on price, and EA couldn't stand seeing their sales drop. EA waited 3 months, then finally dropped the price to $20. That tells me that they felt the pain, and as a result, they went after exclusive rights to NFL gaming. No more ESPN. Next season, you'll see the game back at $50 or even higher.
-- No sig for you!
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.
Well...
In Project Gotham Racing you can race several Porsches (Porsche Boxster S, Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Porsche 550 Spyder, Porsche 911 RS 2.7, Porsche Carrera Coupe, Porsche 911 Turbo, Porsche 911 GT3, Porsche 959, Porsche Carrera GT, Porsche 911 GT1). Did Bizarre Creations/MS pay money that Sony did not have?
The Grand Turismo series (at least in GT3) at least makes up for the no-Porsches rule by having Ruf models (I believe the CTR2 is the "ultimate" car you can get). It's not an "imaginary" model at all. If anything, the Ruf CTR2 (especially) makes the "supercars I dream of list" for a lot of enthusiasts. You're just unlikely to ever see a Ruf outside of Germany (and it is a Ruf, not a "Ruf Porsche").
And the Cayenne? Porsche has had record profits because of the Cayenne. If I was an employee and my dividends just went up 30/60 cents per share I would be AOK with it. Unfortunately the Cayenne is distasteful (I'm not talking about the Turbo and I can let the S slide without too much else to say). But the base model seems like a gussied-up Volkswagen -- no wait, it is! And a gussied-up Touareg base model at that. I digress.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Story source from IGN Sports.
Oh, yeah, it's gonna bomb.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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.