A ruling in a San Francisco court has ordered the NFL Players Association to pay $7m to over 2,000 retired American football players for unpaid royalties in, among other matters, a licensing agreement with EA. This comes after reports suggesting that some retired player's images in a Madden NFL game were told to be ‘scrambled’ to avoid payout.

Madden NFL 02 featured over 600 retired players with an uncanny – but not shown as official – resemblance to their real-world counterparts. This includes their exact weight, height, years in the league, and player position.

Lawyers representing the retired players presented to the court several emails which suggest that the NFL Players Association had in fact sold the rights of 'Hall of Fame' players to EA at “significantly below market rate”. The email adds this was done to stop Take Two, who were considering making a rival to NFL, from obtaining official player licenses.

The leaked Email from Clay Walker, the Senior Vice-President of the NFLPA’s licensing arm PI, was presented in the trial proceedings. It read:  

“Take Two went after retired players to create an NFL-style video game after we gave the exclusive to EA. I was able to forge this deal with [the Pro Football Hall of Fame] that provides them with $400,000 per year (which is significantly below market rate) in exchange for the Hall of Fame player rights. EA owes me a huge favor because that threat was enough to persuade Take Two to back off its plans, leaving EA as the only professional football videogame manufacturer out there.”

However, as the bargain sale of the player rights was made to EA, the licensed players would therefore deserve royalties from the NFLPA for their appearance in the game. The lawyers representing the retired players showed another leaked email to the jury in regards to this matter.

The email, sent from Players Inc vice president of multimedia LaShun Lawson to Madden NFL producer Jeremy Strauser, and also copied to ex-president of PI Doug Allen, reads:

“For all retired players that are not listed... their identity must be altered so that it cannot be recognized. Regarding paragraph 2 of the License Agreement between Electronic Arts and Players Inc, a player’s identity is defined as his name, likeness (including without limitation, number), picture, photograph, voice, facsimile signature and/or biographical information. Hence, any and all players not listed... cannot be represented in Madden 2002 with the number that player actually wore, and must be scrambled."

Today the jury has said that the matter was a violation of the terms of the players' group licensing agreements, awarding $7.1m to the retired players. The NFLPA will also pay $21m in punitive damages.

EA was at no point a defendant or party in the court proceedings. It has not been charged of any wrongdoing and its purchase of the retired NFL player licenses in question were done within the eyes of the law. The defendants of the case were the NFLPA. The matters surrounding the deal involving NFL 2002 was one of several accusations against the NFLPA. The defendant’s lawyer Jeffrey Kessler says he expects the jury's verdict to be overturned.

Source: Bloomberg,  Gamepolitics, LA Times