Another source corroborates claims that 2K Sports is getting back into college basketball video games.
As reported by SportsBusinessJournal, a source told the outlet that 2K Sports plans to make a standalone college basketball game, as opposed to tying it to their NBA 2K video game series. They will have over 100 teams in both men’s and women’s basketball, citing colleges like UCLA and Michigan State from Big Ten and Houston from Big 12.
Most importantly, the source claims that the players are getting “fair market value” compensation for their NIL (name, image, and likeness) rights. For those who don’t know, the entirety of college basketball and football games were abruptly shut down after player Ed O’Bannon sued the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) over NIL rights. NCAA’s contracts were written in such a way that college players were not allowed to make money from their likenesses when they were used in video games.
Presumably, video game studios like EA and 2K could have gotten back into college video games much earlier. Aside from the mess surrounding the NCAA, they lost appetite for the genre as these games were also seeing smaller sales at the time. Ed O’Bannon vs. NCAA was concluded in O’Bannon’s favor, and a subsequent 2019 case that the NCAA also lost forced them to change the rules so that players could get paid for their NIL rights.
This college sports game revival no longer involves the NCAA, but colleges and video game companies are instead working with the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC). According to another news outlet called Extra Points, the CLC asked the industry to send them proposals for new video games that will work to license with the respective colleges. The CLC urged their member colleges to accept the deal that was offered by EA Sports, but that didn’t rule out the possibility that they also license games with other video game companies.
There is clearly a new appetite for new college sports games after the success of EA Sports Football 25. It isn’t just good for the video game companies and the colleges of course. With the new rules put into place from those court rulings, the players who are college athletes in game, and the players buying these games, are also getting to benefit big.
Of course, 2K Sports dropped their own teaser of this potential revival already, so it looks like we’re just waiting for 2K Sports to make it official.
