Being able to play with your favourite team or player is one of the best things about sports video games.
Taking a team to higher divisions, winning their first big title, and trading for or buying that player you would love to see on your team in real life. These are just some of the great experiences sports games provide you.
However, that is only possible because of licenses, as the lack thereof makes those experiences impossible or at the very least significantly damages the experience they provide.
But what caused the licensing battles we see today in the sports video games industry? Why are they damaging sports video games? Are they really that important for fans?
Let's find out.
The Licensing Battles In Sports Video Games
Licensing battles in sports video games have been going on for a long time, and they are especially predominant in US Sports games.
NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB all have licensing agreements with game publishers, with that publisher being the only one that can use the league's image and likeness. In short, if you want to make an NBA game you can't because 2K has an exclusive licensing agreement with the NBA.
You can still make a basketball game, and use a different name to refer to the NBA and their teams. But using the NBA logo, team names, logos, and other image rights, it's impossible. Well, not technically, but you would get sued.
It's similar in football games such as EA FC, UFL, and eFootball. When EA Sports had a partnership with FIFA, they had the image rights to all clubs and players. However, when that ended, EA had to negotiate the club's image rights with every football association, and the player's likeness rights with player associations across the globe.
This allowed clubs to negociate with others games. For example, Inter Milan's image rights are exclusive to eFootball, and they have a different name and symbol on EA FC 25. So while EA FC is still winning the licensing war, it has lost a few battles.
The Licensing War Problems
The main problem of the licensing war is that it kills competition. Madden, NBA 2K, NHL, and MLB The Show haven't had real competition in years.
While some basketball or American football games have come out recently or are in the works, none of them is an actual threat to the 'Big Three'. That's mainly because they don't have the licensing to the leagues, meaning developers need to create a product with imaginary teams and players that is still attractive, which is very hard to do.
Offline modes can't have the 32 NFL teams and their players, as they don't have the image rights. This makes the mode bland and much less immersive than the Madden Franchise mode.
The same thing happens when it comes to online modes. Madden is not perfect, but it allows fans to play with some of the biggest legends of the sport in MUT, while other games don't.
Fans want to play with the Eagles and Saquon Barkley, the Chiefs and Mahomes, with Josh Allen, and so on. Unfortunately, you need to have a license from the NFL to do that. Without real players and teams, there aren't a lot of reasons for fans to play games outside of the official titles for each major sport.
As we all know, competition forces developers to bring their A-game, as they need to deliver a product better than their rivals. This makes for better and more significant improvements year after year, more unique features and community feedback also become much more important.
Having many games competing for the number 1 spot in their respective genre is always good, especially for consumers. That was the case for sports games in the early 2000s, where fans could choose which NBA, MLB, or NFL game they liked the most.
Developers needed to fight to keep their player base, otherwise, they could just go to one of the competitors. Unfortunately, in today's day and age, that is no longer the case. With exclusive licensing, players have one game that sits on the throne for their favourite sport, and they either buy it or have no way to experience their favourite league and players.
Many fans have begged the NFL or NBA to go back to open licensing, allowing multiple companies to acquire the image rights for the league. This would revitalize the sports video games industry, give players more quality products to choose from and force publishers to put real effort into their games and not just release the same product with a new coat of paint every year.
Will this happen in the near future? Probably not, as the publishers that have these exclusive licenses break revenue records year after year, and at the end of the day, it's all about money. However, if one of the leagues sees that there is more money to be made by opening up the licensing, we might get some real competition in the sports games market.