The Gaming Tailgate Video Podcast
“With the games no longer in production and the plaintiffs settling their claims with EA and the Collegiate Licensing Company, the NCAA viewed a settlement now as an appropriate opportunity to provide complete closure to the video game plaintiffs,” said NCAA Chief Legal Officer Donald Remy.
Electronic Arts and the Collegiate Licensing Company finalized a $40M settlement with a series of plaintiffs in late May.
The O'Bannon lawsuit does not feature the plantiffs looking for monetary damages, but rather changes to the current collegiate model. Continue on for more on this lawsuit as well as comments from Peter Moore on what it would take for the NCAA Football franchise to return.
SI.com legal expert Michael McCann offered his thoughts on why the NCAA may have settled in the case:
- Game Informer visited with EA SPORTS Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore and asked what it would take for the NCAA Football franchise to return:NCAA reaching settlement with EA & CLC significant mainly because of evidence: settlement makes EA/CLC less likely to share info w/O'Bannon.
— Michael McCann (@McCannSportsLaw) June 9, 2014
"We've always said that we'd monitor the situation," Moore says.
We asked if there were specific things that would signal an all-clear to pursue the franchise again. "The development teams need to understand what they can and cannot do, and then it becomes a financial thing," Moore tells us. "If it costs you more to develop and pay for the players and what have you than you believe that you can sell, that's not fair to the [development] teams. They need to have an ongoing concern."
In order to get to the point where EA is looking at costs though, Moore expects that systemic change would be necessary across the multi-billion dollar college sports industry. "I think this thing gets bigger than us and our industry before it settles itself down," he says. "We'll step back and watch this thing develop."
UPDATE - From testimony at the O'Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit on Wednesday:
Joel Linzner of Electronic Arts, which suspended its successful football video game series after being sued for not paying former players whose images it was accused of using without permission, said yesterday the company would welcome resurrecting the product.
“If there was an economically efficient way to do it and no rules prohibited it, we would be interested,” Linzner said.
- ESPN has written a lengthy piece on "Why You Should Know (Judge) Claudia Wilken."
- Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delaney believes that the existing lawsuits versus the NCAA will be settled in two to three years.
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