[doikor]

No its 250m for FIFA and World Cup. All the leagues/teams come from individual contracts with each league and all the players from a contract with FIFPro (International Federation of Professional Footballers) which they just renewed. Basically FIFA wants a huge amount of money for the name FIFA on the box.

Football is not like NFL or NBA where you just make a single contract with the league and you get everything. Instead you have to go and make a lot of contracts all over the place. The system is just much more fragmented.

Basically EA could just not pay this money to FIFA and call the game EA Football or something and have all the same content except the FIFA name on the box and the world cup (and the national teams that come with it)

[Retric]

Putting FIFA on the box is clearly covered by trademark law.

I was questioning how much of protection does player statistics have. At least in the US factual information like who’s playing in which team isn’t protected by copyright or trademark.

[boomboomsubban]

It's not their stats that have protection, it's their likeness and names that require a license to use. Several games in the past have featured real rosters with fake names to get around this.

[Retric]

Likeness presumably, but fantasy football doesn’t run into a problem with player names. So while companies would get sued over names it seems like they would also likely win.

That said, graphics are at a point where player likeness is meaningful as is team jerseys. So customers would presumably prefer the licensed product.

[mbg721]

I don't think it's really been tested legally, but during the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, there were a handful of (strikebreakers') names that the players' association got replaced in games.

[boomboomsubban]

Fantasy football is dealing in statistics. Using a persons name in your game implies they endorse your game, the players associations manage this stuff pretty closely.

[Retric]

> Using a persons name in your game implies they endorse your game

I am sure that argument would be made, but I don’t think customers actually think that. Especially if the game makes it clear it’s unofficial.

[boomboomsubban]

I think there were court cases on infringement around thirty years ago, when games were being made where they'd just license Shaq or Ken Griffey Jr and the rest of the names would be fake.