EA Sports is a company that makes sports video games. They are the guys that produce the Madden Football Franchise which is one of the most popular sports options on consoles and internet worldwide. One of their offerings has been electronic college football and basketball games to be played and enjoyed on the home computer. The company started making an NCAA Football game back in 1998 and games have been quite popular ever since.
But EA Sports announced last week that they were dropping their college game offerings because of the myriad legal issues which have arisen concerning the games. Former UCLA Basketball great Ed O’Bannon got the litigation ball rolling when his lawyers sued the NCAA, Electronic Arts and the Collegiate Licensing Company seeking a share of the billions of dollars in revenues for the college athletes who are, after all, the principal attraction down on the field.
O’Bannon’s main beef stemmed from AP’s use of an image in its college basketball game that looked just like Ed. O’Bannon was probably flattered at first until he figured out how much money those folks were making off of his likeness.
EA Sports’ VP for football Cam Weber said in a recent interview, “the ongoing legal issues combined with increased questions surrounding schools and conferences have left us in a difficult position”. He added that the company is currently ‘evaluating our plan for the future of the franchise.”
The financial numbers in this case are staggering. There are literally billions of dollars being made on NCAA athletics and the athletes are not getting any of it. Actually, some funds do manage to drift down to the players on the field from various sources including alumni and others but, then that practice is also frowned upon.
In earlier court action, EA tried to invoke First Amendment rights to shield the company from the player’s lawsuit, but the courts ruled that the characters used in the games were exact replicas of individual players.
Other former NCAA athletes involved in the recent settlements include former Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart, Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller and former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston.
Steve Berman, a Seattle lawyer on the Keller case said, “We hold that the NCAA intentionally looked the other way while EA commercialized the likenesses of students, and it did so because it knew that EA’s financial success meant a bigger royalty check to the NCAA.”
