Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

[Kaanyr Vhok]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

I just don't get it.
Why try the legal route, when there's another way.

A developer makes a football game with full customization (combo of NBA 2k11/Backbreaker) and they don't have to shell out money for a license or player likeness.

The first thing people do when they get a game is editing. Whether ratings, sliders or uniforms, it all depends on what editing features are open to them to use.

"Focus on the engine (gameplay), provied the body (presentation/franchise/online), give us some paints (full customization) and the gaming community will color it how they like it."

If I want NFL, I'll make it.
If I want College, I'll do it.
Maybe Juco or Highschool, it's on the gamer.

The point to this rant, is that there is an easier way around Exclusive Licenses w/out all the drama.

Bingo. Its pretty easy to put NFL rosters in Backbreaker but its not NBA 2k share easy. I'm not sure if this is legal but if it is it would lower the value of the license and thats a good thing

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

The American Needle case wasn't centered on the exclusivity of the deal so much as the deal was brokered under the NFL as a single entity aspect rather than the deal was brokered with all individual 32 teams. There will still be plenty of exclusive deals, they will just be negotiated in a different manner in order to discourage the ability for future lawsuits like this one.

As for your last question "how would the NFL convince a court they're not conspiring to eliminate the competition"...the NFL does not have to ensure competition beyond the initial bidding process for the contract. That is the competition.

The exclusivity and the fact that NFL brokered the deal as one entity, when the NFL isn't one entity, both play a big part in the lawsuit. Remember, in the lower court, the NFL argued that they were a single-entity, so they couldn't conspire with themselves, and it was perfectly legal for them to exclusively go with Reebok. The lower courts agreed and threw the case out, but American Needle Appealed, and the SCOTUS has declared the NFL to be more than one entity.

To me, negotiating exclusive deals with every NFL team would obviously be suspect. Again, how would the deal have looked if Reebok had individually secured the exclusive rights to every team, and locking out American Needle in the process ?

The NFL, up until now, has been able to construct exclusive deals because they were considered a single-entity. Now they aren't, so I don't understand your logic that the NFL just has to alter the way they broker their exclusive deals. If one team brokers a deal with EA, exclusively, that's fine. If all of the teams sign exclusively with EA, there's is a problem.

[ODogg]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

The exclusivity and the fact that NFL brokered the deal as one entity, when the NFL isn't one entity, both play a big part in the lawsuit. Remember, in the lower court, the NFL argued that they were a single-entity, so they couldn't conspire with themselves, and it was perfectly legal for them to exclusively go with Reebok. The lower courts agreed and threw the case out, but American Needle Appealed, and the SCOTUS has declared the NFL to be more than one entity.

To me, negotiating exclusive deals with every NFL team would obviously be suspect. Again, how would the deal have looked if Reebok had individually secured the exclusive rights to every team, and locking out American Needle in the process.

The NFL, up until now, has been able to construct exclusive deals because they were considered a single-entity. Now they aren't, so I don't understand your logic that the NFL just has to alter the way they broker their exclusive deals. If one team brokers a deal with EA, exclusively, that's fine. If all of the teams sign exclusively with EA, there's is a problem.

If they negotiate as separate entities, as they will, then there will be no legal issue.

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

If they negotiate as separate entities, as they will, then there will be no legal issue.

It will be very difficult for the NFL to convince a court that they're not acting as one entity if every team signs an exclusive deal with a company. First, the deal will be more expensive ,for the licensee, because it's exclusive. Second, all the teams will have to sign for the same price because one team isn't going to take less than another. Imagine the headache if one team got a better price than the other ? This is why the NFL awards blanket licenses, on behalf of all 32 franchises, to licensees. It's avoids headaches like this one. It only becomes illegal once the blanket license eliminates competition,thus hurting the consumer.

If every team, individually, signed the same exclusive deal with a licensee, I don't see how they could convince anyone that they're not conspiring with one another, and the licensee, to eliminate competition.

Also, unless the NFL does away with sharing revenues from merchandise ( the NFL shares revenue from all TV and Merchandise sales) wouldn't sharing the revenue that teams received,from their respective exclusive deals, be considered collusion ?

[RAMSFAN21]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

It will be very difficult for the NFL to convince a court that they're not acting as one entity if every team signs an exclusive deal with a company. First, the deal will be more expensive ,for the licensee, because it's exclusive. Second, all the teams will have to sign for the same price because one team isn't going to take less than another. Imagine the headache if one team got a better price than the other ? This is why the NFL awards blanket licenses, on behalf of all 32 franchises, to licensees. It's avoids headaches like this one. It only becomes illegal once the blanket license eliminates competition,thus hurting the consumer.

If every team, individually, signed the same exclusive deal with a licensee, I don't see how they could convince anyone that they're not conspiring with one another, and the licensee, to eliminate competition.

Also, I'm not sure about this, but hats and apparel may be different. I don't think that teams share revenue that comes from apparel sales like they do from revenue that's generated from advertising. Certain teams, because of popularity, sell a lot more apparel than others. I doubt owners who sell the most apparel would agree to share the revenue equally with teams that sell the least; that's not fair.

With a video game, I doubt any owner would agree to take less than another. Also, I think the league would rather that the revenue they get from video games be shared to better benefit the league. The only (legal) way to share that revenue is to award a blanket license to multiple licensees.

Thank you kind sir

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

Thank you kind sir

I was mistaken about the revenue sharing regarding apparel. The NFL shares all TV and merchandise revenue; however, the fact that merchandise revenue is shared would make it hard for clubs, if they negotiate and sign exclusively with EA, to convince a court that they're not conspiring with each other to eliminate competition.

Even if one team gets more money for their rights than another, all 32 franchises are still sharing that money equally amongst each other.

Any way you slice it, a conspiracy is a conspiracy.

[SmashMan]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

Any way you slice it, a conspiracy is a conspiracy.

Just because you keep saying that doesn't make it true.

The NFL can't negotiate in the future as a single entity, that's obvious. But there will be nothing legally wrong with teams individually negotiating with EA on their own behalf.

I think we can all agree that competition would be nothing but good; but we're really reaching to define every potential scenario as a conspiracy.

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

Just because you keep saying that doesn't make it true.

The NFL can't negotiate in the future as a single entity, that's obvious. But there will be nothing legally wrong with teams individually negotiating with EA on their own behalf.

I think we can all agree that competition would be nothing but good; but we're really reaching to define every potential scenario as a conspiracy.

I'm sorry, I don't see how all 32 teams individually signing a deal, to lock out competition, wouldn't be the same difference. If anything, it's a more obvious way doing what they (the NFL) did. If the NFL could have all teams negotiate separately, and avoid anti-trust scrutiny, than why wouldn't they do that in the first place ?

Saying that each individual each team can sign with EA, or whoever else, to avoid anti-trust scrutiny is like saying that the NFL doesn't need anti-trust exemption; it's like saying that whether or not the NFL is a single entity is of no consequence. If that's the case, then why did the NFL use it as their primary argument as to why their deal with Reebok wasn't illegal ? Why did the NFL seek broader anti-trust exemption from the Supreme Court ?

[MJenness]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

Proving it was an anomaly is just as difficult as proving it was a trend mainly because of how well 2k5 sold. It even outsold Madden on the Xbox. It is reasonable to believe there was going to be at least a temporary price war.

Also, if memory serves me correctly, it was VC's plan to offer NFL football at the reduced 19.99 price point for AT LEAST one more year (which didn't happen for obvious reasons)...which really pissed off the NFL AND EA (cause if EA wasn't able to buy the license, they'd have been forced to keep their price of Madden reduced at least one more year).

This whole deal wreaks of callusion, always has...I only hope they dig up enough evidence to show the truth here. At least rattle the cages of EA and the NFL enough for them to say nicht to renewing the exclusive license this time around.

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

Also, if memory serves me correctly, it was VC's plan to offer NFL football at the reduced 19.99 price point for AT LEAST one more year (which didn't happen for obvious reasons)...which really pissed off the NFL AND EA (cause if EA wasn't able to buy the license, they'd have been forced to keep their price of Madden reduced at least one more year).

This whole deal wreaks of callusion, always has...I only hope they dig up enough evidence to show the truth here. At least rattle the cages of EA and the NFL enough for them to say nicht to renewing the exclusive license this time around.

This class-action suit really has nothing to do with the NFL; they don't control pricing. If EA had kept the price at 49.99 and just acquired the exclusive license, they would have been in the clear.

What may rattle the NFL's cage is the anti-trust suit with American Needle.

[RAMSFAN21]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

Class-Action Lawyer Says Supreme Court Ruling Helps Case Against EA Sports

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By Owen Good on May 26, 2010 at 10:30 AM
It will take months to sort out how a Supreme Court decision yesterday might affect exclusive licenses sports leagues grant to game makers. But the side suing EA Sports, alleging Madden is an illegal monopoly, believes it helps their case.

Some believe that the Supreme Court’s 8-0 ruling that the National Football League, for purposes of negotiating licenses, isn’t a single entity but instead 32 separate ones, is narrow enough that it covers only the apparel business (the plaintiff in the case once held a licence to make NFL caps.) After all, it makes little sense for 32 teams to have to individually negotiate their appearances in a video game, where the inclusion of an entire league is integral to the product’s value.

Stuart Paynter, the lead attorney in Pecover vs Electronic Arts, thinks it’s important not to lose sight of the difference between group licensing and an exclusive licence. “There are efficiencies in group licenses,” he said. “There are a lot of transactional costs to signing a licence with each team, and this applies in the apparel context as well. Where we can run into trouble under this new opinion is where someone’s offering an exclusive licence.”

Paynter is not an impartial analyst, of course. He’s representing the class of consumers suing Electronic Arts over its practice of securing exclusive licenses in its sports games, which Paynter alleges was a response to 2K Sports developing lower-priced competing products in the mid-2000s. Paynter also is co-counsel in former Nebraska and Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller’s lawsuit against EA, alleging his likeness was used without his permission in EA’s NCAA Football series while he was in college. Neither have yet gone to trial.

But he contends that American Needle vs NFL is very relevant to Madden – especially given how often that case’s lower court rulings were cited by EA in its filings in the Pecover matter. The Supreme Court’s decision overturned that ruling and sent the case back to be heard by a federal district court.

“A reversal of that decision kills Electronic Arts’ main legal defence,” Paynter said. “It has factual defences that it may still bring up in trial to a jury.” But should Electronic Arts need to appeal an unfavourable decision, it has lost a good chunk of its original argument, Paynter reasoned.

Interestingly, though, he pointed out one possible silver lining for Electronic Arts with yesterday’s ruling – although its hard to imagine the company using it.

“EA could have an antitrust claim against the NFL,” Paynter said. “EA kind of publicly stated that the NFL was the one that insisted on an exclusive licence to make one video game. And if so, EA could have a potential damages claim against the NFL, based on the difference between the huge licensing deal it signed, and the (less expensive) one it would have had if the NFL’s teams hadn’t gotten together and decided to agree to an exclusive group licence.”

But it would seem that EA’s claim of the NFL seeking a single licensee is helpful mostly in an argumentative sense, hardly something worth rupturing a very strong, 20-year publishing relationship with the league. EA also negotiated an exclusive licence with the NFL Players’ Association.

While a ruling that has the force of invalidating such exclusive group licenses would not by itself create competition, Paynter believes it would put the NFL in a mood to solicit other publishers to develop competing games. Electronic Arts would almost certainly negotiate a cheaper deal if it couldn’t secure a guaranteed, legally binding exclusive licence. The NFL would seek to make up the lost revenue by selling another, possibly to Take Two Interactive, whose NFL 2K5 was the last licensed football video game on a console other than Madden.

“Obviously EA would not be willing to pay as much, so economically it would not make sense for the NFL to have one licence,” Paynter said. “It’d be a business decision for Take Two at that point.”

[RAMSFAN21]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

interseting tidbit


The union has the ability to try to block a lockout.

For months, the union has been warning the media and the fans against a lockout. The rhetoric from NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith regarding a lockout is looking more and more accurate, even if to some extent it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

During the 2010 regular season, however, the NFLPA embarked on a series of meetings with players from every team. Systematically, the union obtained advance approval to decertify in the face of a lockout.

Derided by the NFL as a decision to “go out of business,” decertification would prevent the league from locking out the players by converting the NFLPA from a legally-recognized union into a collection of individual, non-union workers. Some think that the NFL would challenge the maneuver as a sham, but such an approach would entail P.R. risks, since the NFL would be using the legal process in order to force a lockout on the players.

Still, the union inexplicably continues to warn against a lockout while ignoring the fact that the NFLPA has spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to line up the ability to block a lockout via decertification. If the union fails to decertify, it will prove that the effort was a ruse aimed at making the NFL think that decertification would occur.

If decertfication happens, the league then would be compelled to craft across-the-board rules regarding free agency, the draft, and player salaries. The union would likely respond by filing an antitrust lawsuit, arguing that the league consists of 32 separate businesses that cannot work together to place common limits on its workers. (This is why the American Needle case was viewed as being critical to the labor situation, even though the facts center on marketing deals. If the league had secured a ruling from the Supreme Court that it is one business, an antitrust claim based on labor rules may have been doomed from the start.)

A league source with knowledge of the labor dynamics recently told us that the NFL could respond to decertification by simply applying in 2011 the rules that applied in 2010: no salary cap, no salary floor, six years to unrestricted free agency, no rookie wage scale (Andrew Luck just peed a little), one franchise tag per team, continuation of drug and steroids policies. The league would adopt this approach in the hopes that it would survive an antitrust challenge; though the NFL lost the American Needle case as it relates to whether the league is one business, the Supreme Court’s written ruling strongly suggests that a pro sports league may have a valid, legal reason to apply across-the-board labor rules.

With no salary cap and no salary floor, teams would be permitted to spend as little or as much on players as they choose — a dynamic that didn’t hurt franchises like the Chiefs, Buccaneers, or Jaguars in 2010, each of whom were far more successful than big-spending teams like the Cowboys and Redskins.

[ODogg]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

I wonder if guys like Rams and LiquorLogic will be happy if you get your wish and the end result is like back in the 80's when you'd buy a game with the Cowboys, Raiders, Patriots and Colts in it and the rest of the teams are generic ala Midway Grizzlies and the like. Because that's what the end result of what these lawsuits could bring. Careful what you wish for..

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

I wonder if guys like Rams and LiquorLogic will be happy if you get your wish and the end result is like back in the 80's when you'd buy a game with the Cowboys, Raiders, Patriots and Colts in it and the rest of the teams are generic ala Midway Grizzlies and the like. Because that's what the end result of what these lawsuits could bring. Careful what you wish for..

Hey, in the 80's customization wasn't possible like it is now. Roster sharing over the internet wasn't possible, so to me, as long as we can make the NFL ourselves, that really wouldn't matter. As long as I get a quality football video game allows me to re-create the NFL, or provides it for me, I'm good. Now, I have no football game, that's up to date, to play.

Now, from a business stand point that would never work; people wouldn't buy a game that's missing NFL teams. You know that, I know that, and more importantly, EA and the NFL know that. They, the NFL and EA, won't let that happen. First, if you read the posts from RAMSFAN, you should know that's a more expensive way of negotiating. Someone has to negotiate those deals with every team; that's pretty costly. The NFL would just award a group license. As long as that group license isn't exclusive, and doesn't prohibit competition, the NFL is in the clear.

[EddieV]

Re: Judge Certifies Class-Action Football Game Pricing Lawsuit Against EA

I wonder if guys like Rams and LiquorLogic will be happy if you get your wish and the end result is like back in the 80's when you'd buy a game with the Cowboys, Raiders, Patriots and Colts in it and the rest of the teams are generic ala Midway Grizzlies and the like.

I've been playing football videogames since the 70s...what game from the 80s are you talking about? I've never seen a game that had some NFL teams and not others.