Supreme Court Rules Against NFL

[Vampyr]

Does this mean if I want to record a football game I no longer need the expressed written consent of NBC and the NFL, but will actually need the expressed written consent of NBC and -both- teams involved?

Well that's just inconvenient.

[TheGame]

Here's the thing though.. while the NFL doesn't own the teams and doesn't reserve the rights to sign them over exclusively anymore, that doesn't mean they lost any control over the player's association.

There have been games in history to have the player association licence and not have the NFL licence ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden_Football_64 ), but I haven't seen a game with the NFL licence and no players licence... though I wouldn't be suprised if there are some out there.

"On December 13, 2004, EA Sports announced it had secured exclusive rights to the NFL and its players' union for the subsequent five years, precluding any other third party from selling a football game using NFL players, teams, stadiums or other licenses. This was recently extended until 2012."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden_NFL

That implies that Madden DID in fact get the player association licence exclusively. If they didn't, Sega probably would have been releasing football games just like Madden 64/93 in the down-time. The best Sega could do now is get all of the teams to agree to be on their game, and they can make it like a college football game with no real player names.

I really don't think people are that desperate these days for a 2k game.

[Typhoid]

For the record, I had Madden Football 64.
That game was horrible.

At any rate this is an awkward ruling, and sadly I think it will change the entire face of every sport in North America within the next year and a half.

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

For the record, I had Madden Football 64.
That game was horrible.

I had it too... It's funny that they released it with the out-dated game engine compared to Psx's version, just with better graphics... I loved 99 for N64 though