One of college football’s biggest brands is still unsure whether it wants to be included in EA Sports’s revitalized college football video game when it returns to the market.
University of Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said his school will not provide EA Sports with its name, logos and other branded properties for the game until new rules determine whether athletes will be able to receive a share of the profits from the game are finished.
The NCAA has indicated that it intends to change its rules to allow college athletes to earn money from some types of sponsorship deals. Federal and state lawmakers have also imposed legislation that would open similar opportunities, some of which are scheduled to take effect this summer.
“As these rules are developed, it is our strong desire that student-athletes can benefit directly by allowing their name, image and performance history to be used in the game,” said Swarbrick in a statement released Monday. .
For athletes to receive money from a video game, they probably need to be able to negotiate as a collective group a price for the use of their names, images and similarities. It is unclear whether future rules will allow for these types of group licensing agreements. The NCAA group working on these particular rule changes has been opposed to allowing group licensing.
EA Sports announced earlier this month that it plans to revive its popular college football game and has begun negotiations with FBS-level schools to include their names and other publicity rights in the new version.
General manager Daryl Holt told ESPN that the game’s creators are prepared to move on without using the players’ names or images in the game, but that they are closely following the proposed changes and would consider including players if the new rules allow. The company has yet to say exactly when the game will be back on the shelves, only that it won’t be ready this year.
The new rules governing athletes’ NIL deals may be in effect long before the first version of the game is available for purchase, leaving time for Notre Dame and any other participants to decide to participate, if they wish.
The first state laws that open the door to university athletes’ endorsement agreements are scheduled to take effect in July this year. Federal lawmakers have also proposed several national options, but they are unlikely to vote for any of them by the end of 2021 at the very least. Most, but not all, of these proposals would allow for the kind of group licensing rights that would allow athletes to participate in the game and earn money from it.
The NCAA, however, has also been working on reformulating its rules in the hope of implementing changes by the beginning of the next school year. A working group proposed changes in late 2020 that would open up several avenues for athletes to earn money while in school, but would not allow them to organize to negotiate a group license.
Although group licensing can be obtained without the help of a players’ union, most professional sports leagues depend on their unions to negotiate these types of agreements. The NCAA opposes unions or the establishment of any rules that may further blur the boundaries between amateur college sports and professional leagues. At the time of the proposal, the leaders of that group said they expected to consider group licensing agreements at some point in the future.
The association was scheduled to vote on the proposed rule changes last month, but decided to postpone the decision indefinitely.
Notre Dame is the first school to publicly state that it wants to wait for new rules to be implemented before deciding whether to participate in the game. Swarbrick did not say that players would have to get involved so that Notre Dame could eventually participate in the game. However, he is one of the few sports directors who has shown public support for allowing group licensing for athletes.