Will EA Sports Lose It's Exclusive NFL Agreement? (god I hope so)

[MrQuestions]

Anyone remember how awesome Madden used to be back in the pre-2005 days? God that was awesome... back before the NFL issued EA exclusive rights on making an NFL football game. Once EA had secured those rights, they immediately stopped making real improvements to the Madden franchise, IMO.

Anyways, the NFL has just lost an anti-trust case filed by a company who would like to make NFL apparel. The NFL had granted exclusive rights to Reebok to make NFL apparel, but the supreme court just decided 9-0 that giving Reebok exclusive rights violates US anti-trust laws.

What does this mean for video games? I'm not a lawyer, but one would assume that the exclusive rights to make a video game are no different than the exclusive rights to make a jersey as far as anti-trust is concerned. Will EA be forced to face competition again and actually improve their game? I hope so... Any lawyers or somebody who knows more about the law and the decision care to chime in?

[XtremeDunkz]

been discussed over and over, please use the other thread.

[Evan_OS]

Do we need specific analyst just for this? I mean seriously, there has been like 5 or 6 threads just like this. It's always a "I hope so" fest.

[MrQuestions]

Quote: Originally Posted by xtremedunkz

been discussed over and over, please use the other thread.

Ah, I'm sorry I didn't realize there was a thread for it already.

[PVarck31]

This has been discussed in multiple threads.