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NBA Rejects EA Deal
PuppiesOnAcid writes "Although the NFL buckled under EA's mighty stronghold in the video game football market (Madden), the NBA has chosen to reject EA's exclusive rights deal. Jon Robinson explains, 'One of the reasons is that the NBA Live series simply doesn't have a stranglehold on the market the way Madden has for years, so by signing an exclusive deal with EA, the NBA would actually be losing money.'"
Apparently, you don't know what a monopoly is.
Anyone else is free to make a football game(and others do), it's just that EA has paid the NFL for the exclusive right to use team and player names in their games.
Even IF the NBA signed a similar deal with EA, other people would be free to develop other basketball games.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
http://sports.ign.com/articles/575/575019p1.html
Looks like EA has denied making any such offer in the first place according to the followup on this article at IGN.
On the other hand, the pro sports leagues themselves are monopolies. MLB has an antitrust exemption; the others have a partial exemption relating to broadcast rights. (Recall USFL v. NFL...) I imagine an enterprising lawyer, or Al Davis, if he's looking for a new feud, could make a reasonable case against the NFL deal.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"Although the NFL buckled under EA's mighty stronghold in the video game football market (Madden)"
This statement is not true. The NFL solicitied bids for video game exclusivity. The NFL now is preferring to do everything they possibly can with exclusive deals.
I don't know how Slashdotters allow people like PuppiesOnAcid to spread such lies.
Ah, wonderful jump/leap of logic you make there. What exactly is it about me that you apparently know that states I have no understanding of the law? Obviously you must know something about my education that I (nor my college diploma) apparently know. How delightful.
A "legal" definition of monopoly is when a company has achieved the power to fix prices and/or exclude all competition, along with having corporate policies in place that maintain, preserve, and extend or use that power once achieved. Now that EA has the exclusive NFL rights, it can fix prices wherever it wants (since you have no other recourse of product to purchase if you want an officially licensed game). By virtue of the exclusive license they have excluded their competition from having the same license. The only part unknown at this stage is whether they have policies in place to grow and maintain their power. You could argue their attempt to gain a matching exclusivity with the NBA (and who knows about the NHL - they're ripe for the money right now with the lockout) is proof that they are trying to leverage their power with the NFL against the NBA and kill off more competition.
In any case, look at legal precedent as well. The Microsoft case present some interesting parallels, as I alluded to earlier. If EA is not considered to be a monopoly in legal terms (which is ironic, as it generally is the government which decides such matters, as it's usually the government which brings anti-competitive/monopolistic practices to the court system for judicial review), it could arguably be accused of anti-competitive tactics.This is the core of what builds a monopoly. As I said before, had you read my post closely, you would see that I purported that EA is beginning to become a monopoly - and locking out all competition to a product via exclusivity rights is how it all begins. Haven't we seen Microsoft tweak things in the past so that other people's products wouldn't "work" with their software? Does that stop people from writing their software? No, it certainly does not. But - and this is the key point - when your product already enjoys a market share, doing this helps to guarantee your share tends to 100%. Well, Madden already enjoys a high market share, and by getting the NFL agreement, they help to prevent other competing products from gaining ground, as it will always be the case that people will not buy a game without actual teams and players.
Londovir
And then who's going to buy a basketball game (pro or college) without the real players?
The last time I checked it, college sports games weren't allowed to have actual player names, because it was considered an endorsement by the players, and was therefore illegal. This rule may have changed, but I haven't seen a college sports game since the days of the SNES, so I'm not sure. AFAIK, they're more than welcome to use teams, they just can't use the players.