By Jim Shea

Lately, Electronic Arts (EA) have been seeing better days. The holiday sales for EA have been spectacular; in fact, 2004 was a record-breaking year for EA. It’s amazing to see a video game company come from a humble beginning to becoming a titan in Wall Street today. However, their hallmark franchise, Madden Football, has been there since the company’s beginning as the first Madden Football game when it came out for the Sega Genesis system in 1991. Most video-game players today know that Madden Football is the name in football gaming (and sales have proven that). Many rival companies are envious of the success EA has. However, that envy has now turned to anger as EA have signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League, meaning EA has exclusive rights to all NFL team names, players’ names and other NFL properties. In technical terms, EA will become the sole publisher of the NFL license, while other publishers will have to find alternatives for their football games.

If you think that was enough, EA gave the knock-out punch two weeks ago when they acquired the rights to carry the ESPN trademark in their games. What’s remarkable about this particular deal is that the deal runs for 15 years. That’s quite a hefty length of time for an exclusive deal. According to a spokesman from EA, “The term is really a signal and a commitment level between the two partners,” he said during an interview with Gamespot.com. With both the NFL and ESPN on their side, EA will undoubtedly see phenomenal sales once their deal with both parties begins in 2006.

One question that comes to mind after all these exclusive deals is what will happen to the Madden name in EA’s football games. Ex-Raiders coach/color commentator John Madden’s namesake has always been in EA’s football games for 14 years, but now people are beginning to wonder what EA will do with Madden’s name now that they have the rights to ESPN’s name. Although EA has made no official announcements on whether or not they’ll keep Madden’s name, bear in mind that John Madden is under contract with an affiliate of ESPN, ABC Network.

While it seems as though EA may have just won the Super Bowl, there is one unfortunate loser out of all this. Take-Two Interactive previously had the rights to the ESPN trademark, but now lost it thanks to EA. Take-Two Interactive (better known for its Grand Theft Auto games) is the publisher for Visual Concepts, who has created sports games for ESPN since 2003. Until recently, Visual Concepts was going to make ESPN Baseball 2K5, which was going to be release this spring. Take-Two announced in a press release that they are dropping the ESPN name from its game, but still intend to release the game. Although the deal with EA and ESPN doesn’t go into effect until 2006, Take-Two believes that carrying the ESPN name in their game would only be “free publicity” for EA.

However, Take-Two isn’t going down for the count just yet. Take-Two Interactive has counteracted against EA, as last week Take-Two announced they signed an exclusive deal of their own with Major League Baseball (MLB) and Major League Baseball Players Association to be the sole publisher of MLB licensed games. This gives Take-Two the advantage as EA won’t be able to make a baseball game with the MLB license. Take-Two’s deal with MLB goes into effect in 2006 as well.

While other game publishers won’t be able to use the NFL or MLB licenses in their games for awhile, EA and Take-Two will definitely wage war in the sports video game market as each side has its own exclusive deal. The only question left to ponder is how players will react to all this. Certainly, their choices for football and baseball will be limited come 2006, but it almost seems like EA is building a monopoly with their deals with the NFL and ESPN. Now it’s just a “wait-and-see” game for EA and Take-Two as they hope their exclusive deals will become money makers. Only time will tell if another game company signs an exclusive deal with the National Basketball Association.