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EA set to get exclusive NFL player rights
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Well-respected sports-industry magazine says the game giant is close to a billion-dollar deal.
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 may 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.
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, and The Sports Business Journal remains the only publication to have published the story.
GameSpot will have more details on this developing story as they become available.
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Article can be found HERE.
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