Digital Sportspage Blog

More bad news on the licensing front. As reported by Kotaku:

Electronic Arts today announced that they’ve extended their exclusive agreement with the NFL and the Players Association for another three years, meaning the publisher has the only agreement in place with the league for creating licensed football games through the 2012/2013 season.

“We’ve just completed a period of renegotiations with the NFL for a three year extension of our current deal,” Peter Moore said in an interview with Kotaku. He added that Electronic Arts plans to expand that license to include games beyond Madden, including, potentially, a fantasy football title.

Moore said had they not locked down the NFL license soon the publisher would have had to start making decisions about “redeploying” the team who would have been starting work on Madden 2010 in eight months or so.

Redeploying? This seems to suggest that the NFL gaming license is exclusive to one company only. It’s possible that the NFL has found it more profitable to sell the license as an exclusive, and will continue this model for the foreseeable future.

Moore declined to comment directly on rumors that Electronic Arts has been in talks with the NBA to land a similar exclusive deal, but he did say it wasn’t the way EA operates.

“The deal we had with the NFL it was instigated by the NFL, it wasn’t EA going after them,” he said. “The NFL tendered for the exclusive license and EA bid on the license.”

This year marks the 20th Anniversary of Madden a franchise that Moore said has a “legacy of innovation” and one he says will continue to innovate.

“Legacy of innovation”? For a title that has been stagnant?

Without competition, expect more of the same mediocrity. Or actually, we should hope that EA is mediocre, if its latest new title (NFL Tour) is any example of what passes for innovation at Tiburon these days.