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In keeping with their ‘acquire everything’ policy EA have secured the exclusive rights to leading college football league, the NCAA. The deal includes players and branding on console, online and handheld platforms and is in place for the next six years, starting sometime this summer. The student association joins its bigger brother, the NFL which surprised everyone last year by signing a similar exclusivity deal with the US publisher.
The deal has raised eyebrows across the gaming world, not least because of the fact that EA were already the only people making NCAA based games anyway. What seems likely is that, having stopped Visual Concepts’ ESPN NFL2k series in its tracks with the NFL licence deal, EA wanted to make sure it had shut them out of the football market entirely by sowing up the college game too. Effectively, it means that any market share the Take Two owned studio had managed to wrestle from EA with its high-quality but budget priced has now been snatched back, which is a shame for everyone except EA really.
Financial terms have not been disclosed but we can safely assume that a soul was involved somewhere.
