Anthony Perez

A little over a month ago Electronic Arts struck a five-year deal with the National Football League and NFL Players Association to secure the exclusive rights to all NFL teams, players and stadiums; making EA the sole publisher of NFL games for the next half-decade. Gamers all over the nation stood up in protest, grabbing torches and pitchforks, pledging to never purchase another Electronic Arts game. I, for one, harbored strong resentment towards the deal at first, because the ESPN NFL 2K series had become my favorite football franchise over the past two years. Such is the cause of refraining myself from writing this editorial until the dust had settled, the aftermath had been exposed, and I could fully analyze and react to the entire situation.

From a business standpoint, Electronic Arts did something that companies have been doing for decades, simply with a much more publicly recognized license. EA has already done this with three other sports leagues; the PGA, FIFA, and NASCAR are all EA licenses, but none of these acquisitions received such uproar from the gaming community, in fact few people were aware that said licenses were exclusively owned by EA. In this instance, however, EA looked somewhat cowardly to many gamers, since the Madden franchise had seen its first real threat in nearly a decade. Madden NFL Football has been dominant on the virtual gridiron, shaking off challenges from Acclaim's NFL Quarterback Club, 989 Sport's NFL GameDay, and XSN's NFL Fever, which all pulled out of the game after a few years of moderate to downright horrible sales. The ESPN NFL 2K series began as merely NFL 2K for the now discontinued Sega Dreamcast, but became available across multiple platforms when Sega dropped hardware production and became a third-party software developer in February 2001.

After years of lackluster sales, despite an equal, or arguably superior product compared to EA's football game, Sega entered a distribution partnership with Take-Two Interactive and dropped its price tag to the easily affordable $19.99 for last summer's ESPN NFL 2K5. The bold move and aggressive marketing campaign for ESPN NFL 2K5 gave the product a head of steam, which slowly, but surely, chipped away at Madden's massive fan base. This move did not sit well with Electronic Arts, and they answered back by not only securing the NFL license, but purchasing both the Arena Football League and ESPN licenses, the latter for a whopping 15 year period. Electronic Arts sent a powerful and scary message to the rest of the industry, one that frightened gamers and stirred the entire community into a giant frenzy.

The thought was that this deal would open the licensing floodgates, and every publisher around would look at buying up exclusive rights to beloved entities. The fact of the matter is, no such floodgates have or will open, because this practice has always been quite embedded in the industry, in some form. Look around and try to find a license that hasn't already been snatched up: Almost every Hollywood film, comic franchise, and popular book series is owned by some publisher. Marvel Comics properties are published solely by Activision. All of the Lord of the Rings games based on the movie trilogy are published exclusively by EA, while Black Isle Studios publishes the games based on the book trilogy. Game adaptations of the recently released films The Incredibles and Constantine are being exclusively published by THQ, who also publish all WWE videogames.

It isn't the beginning of some licensing revolution or the end of moral publishing ethics, as if there were any to begin with, but merely business, and smart business to boot, since the goal of every business, aside from nonprofit organizations, is to make money. Money makes the world go round, and it would be na've and silly to think that the NFL license wouldn't have eventually been tapped at some point. It's a gold mine, one which saw roughly $2.5 million go to Sega, Take-Two, and developer Visual Concepts' product. While the Playstation 2 version of Madden NFL 2005 alone outsold the two versions of ESPN NFL 2K5 by nearly 700,000 units, Sega's game was becoming far too popular, much too quickly. EA made a pre-emptive strike, ending the threat before it became too severe, much like calling an exterminator before an infestation of rodents becomes an even bigger nuisance.

The point of this editorial was to neither demonize nor defend Electronic Arts, but to put to rest the fear of licensing that has stirred gamers into a frenzy since the NFL acquisition on December 13, 2004. Personally, I would like to see the four major sporting leagues left alone, but ever since the NFL deal other sporting licenses have been scooped up, such as Take-Two's somewhat nonexclusive Major League Baseball deal. It will only be a matter of time until the NBA and NHL ' if the league still exists in the future - follow suit and are purchased by either Take-Two or Electronic Arts. Fear not, however: the industry has been this way since as far back as, at least, the Atari 2600 days. Remember the horrible ET: The Extra Terrestrial' Guess what' That was licensed. The spirit of competition isn't about who can make the best product, but rather who can secure its rights first.