Alliedassault - EA Sports to buy out NFL Players Inc.

[quote:fc82a]Report: EA set to get exclusive NFL player rights?
[UPDATE] Well-respected sports-industry magazine says the game giant is close to a billion-dollar deal. However, ESPNvideogames.com reps claim to have debunked the story as false.

Two weeks ago, The Sports Business Journal, one of the most respected trade journals of the athletic entertainment business, revealed the identity of Madden NFL 2005 cover athlete Ray Lewis several days before EA Sports announced it.

Now it appears they might have broken one of biggest sports-licensing stories in the game industry's history.

The May 3 issue of the Journal contained a story with the headline "EA set to pay Players Inc. $1 billion." According to the article, Electronic Arts is in final negotiations with Players Inc., the NFL Players' Association marketing arm, to exclusively license all NFL player rights for the next four years. The Journal set the price tag of the deal at $250 million each year, which EA would pay Players Inc.; in other words, a literal billion-dollar contract.

Given the large sums reportedly at stake, the exclusivity of the EA/NLFPA deal would be almost certainly strict. If that turns out to be the case, no non-EA Sports game could license NFL player likenesses--an almost certainly fatal blow to the Madden series' rivals, such as ESPN NFL Football.

When provided with excerpts from the article by GameSpot, EA Sports representatives promised to pass them along to "someone who can answer your questions." As of press time, no official confirmation or denial of the EA/NLFPA negotiations had been given by EA.

While the The Sports Business Journal broke the story, it was, ironically, reprinted in the magazine ESPN. This prompted a moderator at ESPNvideogames.com to call the NFLPA. According to the moderator, NFLPA reps denied that anything other than "normal" licensing deals were in play. Attempts to contact the NFLPA directly were unsuccessful as of press time.

GameSpot will have more details on this developing story as they become available.[/quote:fc82a]

[url:fc82a]http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05/18/news_6098784.html[/url:fc82a]

Some of you may not even know what this is about, but what a huge loss to any other football game should this happen. In addition to not being able to use the faces of the players, they would not be able to use their names. I'm not sure about team names or nicknames, though. I think that is a seperate NFL license.