A fight is brewing over the future of college basketball video games

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I’m still in Brazil, and still without a computer — but I did obtain an interesting memo over the weekend. Fortunately, Joan Niesen, our assignment editor, has a working laptop and was able to help get this news to your inboxes, after I sent along some voice memos. So if the prose sounds a bit different, that’s why! I will return to America on Friday.

A fight may be brewing over the next college basketball video game.

Remember two weeks ago, when Matt wrote about the likelihood of EA Sports releasing a college basketball video game in 2028? The gist was this: Both 2K Sports and EA Sports stopped making their college hoops games more than 15 years ago due to licensing concerns and lackluster sales. But after EA Sports College Football 25 was such a massive hit, demand for a basketball game naturally surged — and on June 30, Extra Points broke the news that the College Licensing Company (CLC) recommended that conferences accept EA’s proposal to bring back their college hoops video game.

But there was an interesting (relevant) wrinkle in the CLC recommendation memo: EA wasn’t the only company to submit a proposal. In fact, CLC put out a request for proposal (RFP) to create a college basketball video game in November, and three companies filed formal bids.

Many fans assumed one of those companies was 2K. After all, 2K makes the popular NBA 2K video games and also dropped the following tweet shortly after we broke the news of the return of a college basketball game (and EA confirmed):

We can confirm those suspicions. 2K was one of the three companies to make a formal bid. And now, we can share more specific information about their proposal.

On July 11, CLC sent another note to conferences. Because of a nondisclosure agreement, CLC wrote, it hadn’t been able to share the details of 2K’s proposal — but in the wake of the CLC recommendation of EA’s proposal, 2K contacted schools directly with its own proposal, asking them to delay approval of the EA game. In effect, that broke the NDA, and CLC is now sharing the 2K plan widely.

The original CLC memo laid out the terms of EA Sports’ proposal, stating that EA was the only company that had submitted a bid for a standalone, arcade simulation featuring every men’s and women’s basketball team in Division I.

This new memo is consistent with that assessment; 2K’s proposal was for a “non-exclusive model for a limited number of DI basketball teams that would be a 5v5 tournament gameplay format integrated into its NBA 2K game.” 2K promised to assess the viability of a standalone game as early as 2030, assuming the initial release met certain milestones. It also proposed a limited number of teams: 16 total from the men’s and women’s game in Year 1, 32 in Year 2 and 68 in Year 3.

More info, after the jump:

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