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Originally Posted by CM Hooe |
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I think there are a couple important points of distinction here which makes the FIFA situation unique.
First, the FIFA organization is rather famously corrupt. It is likely that organization has an overinflated value of itself and was asking for way too much money to continue the relationship. Heck, after EA announced they were ending the license, FIFA issued a rather adversarial counter statement saying they would continue to produce “THE BEST” soccer games under their label.
Second, EA Sports already has exclusive licenses for many of the major soccer leagues worldwide. Use of those league licenses and player likenesses doesn’t require FIFA’s sign-off. The value EA was receiving from the FIFA brand was actually pretty minimal? I don’t think a similar argument can be made about the NFL brand contributing little value to the Madden series. That shield matters, there is no other major football league available to license. The NFL is synonymous with the sport of football itself in a way that FIFA is not with soccer.
To that end, I doubt EA would be willing to put themselves in a position of losing Madden NFL by allowing a different company to sign an exclusive license and sweep the NFL away from them, be it Take 2, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Epic, or any other company loosely involved in video games with lots of money to burn. We all know that the NFL loves exclusive agreements, and it is the most popular televised property in America, so I have to imagine there are plenty of companies that would readily cough up the dough to make an exclusively licensed NFL product unopposed if EA chose to not do so.
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EA used to have exclusive rights to the NFLPA and exclusive rights to all NFL console games. These new 2k deals give them unlimited access to the NFLPA and non-sim use of the NFL. A case can be made the EA already has put themselves in a position to lose exclusive rights to Madden. Possibly a decision they chose themselves for whatever reason. FIFA situation just proves it’s something they are willing to do under certain circumstances.
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