EA Sports College Basketball may be in big, big trouble

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

Back in June, I reported that EA Sports was hoping to get back into the college basketball video game business. The College Licensing Company (CLC) requested proposals from various video game companies to make a D-I college basketball game, and according to a memo dated June 26 that I obtained, the CLC recommended schools accept EA’s proposal.

Shortly after I published a newsletter detailing that memo, EA Sports tweeted the following:

But EA wasn’t the only company to submit a bid. Take Two (2K), the publisher of the popular NBA2K video game series, also submitted a bid. 

Unlike EA Sports, the 2K bid did not call for the inclusion of every single D-I men’s and women’s basketball program. Instead, a different CLC memo detailed the 2K proposal as a non-exclusive license to produce a “5v5 tournament gameplay format integrated into NBA 2K MyTeam Mode via downloadable content (DLC).” 2K would evaluate the viability of a standalone college basketball title, depending on the financial performance of college basketball DLC.

Given that EA Sports was the only company to propose a standalone college basketball title that include every D-I men’s and women’s basketball program, and given that EA is the publisher of the wildly popular EA Sports College Football series, and given that CLC specifically recommended that schools accept EA’s proposal, consumers would be forgiven for thinking that EA was absolutely going to be making a college basketball video game.

But you know what happens when you assume? Sometimes, you’re right.

Last week, Ben Portnoy of Sports Business Journal reported that 2K has made a significant push to secure team licenses, one that threatened the very viability of EA’s plans.

I can confirm this reporting. Based on conversations I’ve had with licensing professionals, campus-based administrators, and those in the video game industry, I believe it is fair to say EA might not make a college basketball video game after all. There are campus-based licensing professionals who already believe EA is going to walk away.

The battle isn’t just about two very different visions for how collegiate video game licensing should work. It’s also about different visions for a consumer product, what kind of risk appetite both schools and video game publishers can stomach, and how quickly a company can get a product to market.

Here’s what I’ve been hearing so far:

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