Digital Arts revealed earlier this 12 months that it’s planning to add a college basketball game to its ever-expanding roster of sports activities franchises. Then 2K Video games got here out hours later and indicated it was doing the same. Now new reporting suggests each publishers have been at warfare behind the scenes making an attempt to lock up the offers wanted to make an NCAA basketball recreation a actuality.
Sports Business Journal reports that whereas EA received a bidding spherical earlier this 12 months with the Collegiate Licensing Firm for the rights to the NCAA model, 2K Video games has moved ahead with its personal faculty basketball recreation by making an attempt to barter model partnerships with particular person faculties like UCLA.
“UCLA Athletics and UCLA Trademarks & Licensing, an enterprise of the Associated Students UCLA, have announced a long-term collaboration with 2K which will see the UCLA Men’s and Women’s Basketball programs bring the rich legacy of Bruins basketball to a future project,” the varsity announced on Thursday.
Deliver the Insanity. Let’s run it again. #CBB #ItsInTheGame pic.twitter.com/iBNhGxn2yj
— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) June 30, 2025
The campus has been quiet for too lengthy 😏 https://t.co/AuqoX5u5Qr
— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) June 30, 2025
EA is seemingly very sad about this. In response to Sports activities Enterprise Journal, it needed the rights to the whole lot in NCAA divisional basketball on each males’s and ladies’s leagues, which might give it the form of exclusivity stranglehold it lengthy had with the NFL in its Madden sequence. And if EA doesn’t get its means, sources informed Sports activities Enterprise Journal the writer may abandon the upcoming recreation altogether.
“The opportunity that’s excited us in college basketball is to deliver a full, standalone experience that captures everything that makes the sport so special,” EA Sports activities VP Sean O’Brien informed SBJ in a press release. “The approach we’ve proposed is to create a game that includes all 350-plus NCAA Division I schools—both men’s and women’s teams included—with name, image and likeness compensation for all athletes, 32 conferences, the NCAA and all things that make ‘March Madness’ the most exciting month of sports and all the traditions and pageantry fans love.”
Principally, 2K Video games, which was reportedly a part of the NCAA bidding warfare however misplaced to EA, has determined to maneuver forward with a school basketball recreation regardless. Whereas it deserted its Hoops franchise over a decade in the past, it’s been releasing NBA2K yearly and will rapidly spin off a brand new model of it for school groups or, as SBJ experiences, presumably place it as an add-on or growth for the prevailing franchise.
EA, which additionally deserted its basketball franchise over a decade in the past, should begin from scratch. Recent reporting suggests a brand new recreation could be years away at greatest and presumably not arrive until 2028 or later. Until it will probably get the NCAA and its member colleges to tug the plug on 2K’s recreation, it’ll be coming in late. A giant a part of what helped EA Sports activities School Soccer explode in recognition final 12 months was years of pent-up demand. Now each publishers are in a race to see who can money in on the newest untapped marketplace for annual sports activities video games.
