EA is FINALLY here!

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. So I'm not a gamer, right? But I know, I know how many people listening to this radio program are, whether you're listening to it live, or you're consuming it on YouTube in the best of format or just in a podcast. I know how many people play. It's not just a video game.

That's what Matt Brown from Extra Points, the newsletter, told me you can go to extrapoints.com as well. That's what he told me when I when I opened up my email today. That is not just a video game. It is way more than that. So let's get into it.

Matt Brown, Extra Points at Matt Brown EP on Twitter. This is a monumental thing. It's been coming for such a long time that I think a lot of people just can't believe it's here. I know, right? EA is not the kind of company that I think has encouraged people to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So I understand that when executives from EA would give out press releases or give interviews that didn't stick in the video game buying public, but it's hard to explain away a commercial. It's hard to explain away everything that's happened here over the last two weeks. It's been a long time, right? It's been over a decade. I understand why so many people now are so excited about this. Scarcity always helps a product, you know, when you've taken it away.

I guess that's why they get rid of the McRib for however many months a year. In my own brain, I was hoping it was for another reason, but that's fine. But it has been such a long time since we've had this, but it's not just the video game anymore. And I think you really walked us through the steps beautifully in the newsletter. Tell us what it really is. Yeah, I look at this as really four different kind of stories, right? And so, like, there's the kind that I've written a lot about.

And if you want to see your head explode, you'll take a walk through my Twitter mentions here. There's a lot of people that are just interested in this from a consumer perspective, right? They want to know how Dynasty looks. They want to know if this fight songs in the game. And it's that kind of story.

That's great. This is also a gigantic licensing and NIL story. This is the largest, to the best of my knowledge, collegiate NIL deal in terms of number of people in history. By a long shot, EA is going to spend the quote that's in all the stories is like six and a half million dollars. It's really substantially more than that to get licenses for 85 players on every single one of these teams. And the logistics of pulling that off are important because that shapes the development of future video games. It shapes what those contracts look like.

So it's that kind of story. It's a university marketing story because Gen Z and to some extent, even millennials are not engaging in sports content the same way that the previous generations have. And it's a major concern for not just athletic departments, but universities on how to better reach those consumers because they're not buying tickets at the same rate.

They're not watching games the same way. And it's less true here in the triangle, but elsewhere in the country, you have many schools that are facing enrollment clips. They're desperately trying to recruit new students to come to come to school and the marketing benefit that they get from this game to reach new audiences is immense. It's not something you can easily pay for through billboards or direct mailing campaigns.

And then it's also a labor story. Maybe we don't want to talk about here specifically because I think a lot of people are wondering, like, 600 bucks doesn't seem like that much money, you know? We had heard inklings that when this story had been discussed in that way, back before it went away, that if EA Sports had paid out per athlete, it wouldn't be nearly as much as people think.

And I think when you see the number, that does seem a little low. I'll add the value of the video game because all the players apparently are getting a game as well, a copy of the game. So it's $670 per athlete, $600 per athlete in, I guess, cash or however, Bitcoin.

They're going to do it. And $70 for the game multiplied by 85 players on scholarship and I guess some schools maybe don't have 85 on scholarship and 134 Division 1 schools and all FPS schools theoretically can opt in. My math on a calculator came out to $7.63 million. That sounds big, but broken down per athlete, it's not.

Is there room for that to go up? Well, and I would also add, right, there's also the EA is paying one team partners, the licensing agents, to broker all of these deals a fee on top of that. And then they're paying the licensees to the universities themselves and the Bulls and the college football playoff. And then, and maybe some of these music assets.

And then you could see how that number really kind of ticks closer to 10 and beyond in a hurry. The question though, it really is how much money is this game going to really make? And this is the kind of thing where I get a lot of pushback from fans when I share what I hear from industry analysts, the kind of people that say you should buy or hold EA stock or who study this stuff for a living. What we hear are estimates anywhere from 15 to 30% of the total revenue from Madden, right? A much smaller game.

And then you talk to fans, particularly fans I think around our age, are like, well, that's ridiculous. It's going to sell more than Madden. Madden sucks.

Everybody's been wanting this game for a long time. And we don't really know. We don't really know what kind of revenue beyond point of sale will come from this, right? Madden makes a gazillion dollars for Madden Ultimate team and from people buying cosmetic uniform packs and spending money above and beyond that $70.

We haven't had that at scale in college football ever. We don't really know what the audience demand is. So that's part of why this number is conservative, right? $7 million out of 80 million total sales is very different from $7 million out of 250 million total sales.

We don't totally know. The other important thing that people need to remember is that Madden and NBA 2K and NHL and everything else have these group licensing deals negotiated by their union. For the ones who work hard to ensure their crew can always go the extra mile and the ones who get in early so everyone can go home on time. There's Grainger offering professional grade supplies backed by product experts so you can quickly and easily find what you need. Plus, you can count on access to a committed team ready to go the extra mile for you. Call, click Grainger.com or just stop by.

Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Our football players do not have a union because as of today, this might change by the time I get off the phone with you. They're not employees.

In some states, they couldn't legally organize anyway. So the company that brokered this deal was picked by EA. So we shouldn't necessarily be shocked that maybe it didn't resemble what other deals could look like. I don't think there's ever a world where college athletes are getting 20 grand or getting mad money for being in this game. Is there a world where in future contracts it could be substantially more than $600? Yeah, but that will depend on how well the game does and how well the athletes organize. And Matt Brown from Extra Points is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show.

And the other aspect of this is that, stories I've written, I've read about it. And I think, I don't know if you alluded to it specifically, but the value of the athlete isn't as much as the value of the logo of the schools. Not even close. Right. So if the athlete doesn't want to be a part of it, they're just fine. Okay, that's fine.

You don't have to be. And we'll just take the average of what your position looked like. In other words, the same Georgia quarterback. They don't even need the current Georgia quarterback. They've all looked the same. Maybe Alabama's changed a little bit.

Clemson really hasn't over the last decade or so. So it doesn't really matter. So if you don't want to be a part of it, that's fine. We'll keep your $600 and the game.

And we'll just, the game will go on without you. So I think all these players pretty much are going to take it. But will anything change really when athletes are represented by a union or an association, you think? Oh yeah, I think potentially significantly.

And I'll give you an example, right? So, you know, EA's communication team, when they've talked with me and I think in a couple of these other stories have emphasized that what they wanted to do was make this contract as expansive and inclusive as possible. Which is why you have, you know, they're boosting the roster limits to 85 per team. And that means that there's going to be a lot of people who do not play this year who will get to be in the game and get a check and be a part of the experience. And that's great, but a union might decide we don't actually care about that. And what we would rather have are smaller roster sizes in exchange for more money or exchange maybe for royalty opportunities or ways for us to bet on ourselves and the upside of this product. I think either of those are completely defensible negotiation asks, but it's not for me to say which one you should do. That's up to the players. And right now the players didn't get that ask in a world where they do get that ask. Maybe this deal looks different in several different ways. They could, I mean, maybe it gets worse, right? If the game is, you know, the second next year's game doesn't perform very well and the pool goes down, but you get what you asked for.

I think that's the important question here. Matt Brown from Extra Points, a couple of more things and then we'll let you go. And this is more for the gamers and maybe they know the answer to this. But you had alluded to special, I guess, uniform packs.

What will the game come loaded with? Will you have uniform options? Can I do Matt Black, you know, toughie on a state helmet? Can I do white with toughie?

Can I do the diamond NCS? Will we have different options or was that basically up to the school to decide? Here's what you're allowed to have.

A lot of it's going to be up to you to the school or their, you know, Learfield or play by partner, whoever owns some of those, like those multimedia rights. But what EA asked everybody for was give us a gazillion uniforms and we want to know print like upfront. We want to know your most current home away and primary alternate, right? So you can mix and match those. And then they said, we want to know, are there other alternatives you wear at a given year? Are there alternatives that you've worn historically that you think are important?

Do you have historical uniforms that you want to highlight and give us a bunch and let us know which ones are the most important? Because we might put some of these behind the DLC. And if, you know, we don't want your primary uniform or the thing that you wear, like every, you know, every Thursday night game to be behind a $10 paywall and people scream at us.

Right. But, you know, I've, I've seen a couple of these, uh, some of them are through open records requests. Some of them are because schools have just like said, like, don't publish this, but here's the, here's the zip drive. There's a, and you have some stuff that's from like the seventies. Um, you have, you know, Oregon obviously is not going to just give them four uniforms. That's kind of a core part of the Oregon experience.

It's your Penn state fan where you've been using the same uniform since the paleolithic era. Yeah. I would say, you know, we can probably estimate what that's going to look like here. I think it's fair to say if you're a fan of, of state or Carolina or Duke, that there will be multiple options without you having to pay for anything.

And if you decide to do that, there will be much more. Um, and also I think, I think I can also say this without getting in trouble. If any of the triangle schools decide to add an alternate uniform this year, right. Um, EA has said the school gets to release it first and then you play with it. And the week after you play with it, we'll put it in the game. Oh, cool.

So you can update the game like in real time. Yep. Uh, you know, on a, on a, on a very regular basis, they've already told me they're going to be doing that with rosters. Oh, that's awesome. All right now, final thing. And this is just because I read the, read, read the newsletter.

How will you turn Kent state into a five star power? Um, my plan is to cheat as much as I'm allowed to do in the game. Um, and then absent that, um, I'm probably going to get on Reddit.

I'm going to go test on the developers. I know it's like, listen, I'm not going to publish this, but unlike the rest of the teenagers, man, I got bills. I got kids. I can't think 45 hours into this. What's the meta, what's the, you know, I, I plan to utilize every bit of influence that I've gained over the last three years, unethically to help keep my personal, not mine, you know, Kent state or Akron or Monroe, um, become a powerhouse.

Cause I can't throw a hundred hours into this. Like I used to that, that just sounds like college sports to me. That doesn't sound like anything untoward. We, we deal with that.

We deal with that all the time. Uh, Matt Brown, man, this was awesome at Matt Brown, EP, extra points, the newsletter, go get it. Uh, and then you can read about this stuff and laugh because man, I think this stuff is great.

And it is so much more than a video game, which speaks to me because the video game isn't my wheelhouse, but, uh, it is for a lot of other people. I thank you so much, man. Of course. It's my pleasure. Thanks my friends. Take care without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running, everything would suddenly stop hospitals, factories, schools, and power plants.

They all depend on you no matter the weather emergency or time of day. You're the ones who get it done at Grainger. Grainger, we're here for you with professional grade industrial supplies. Count on real time product availability and fast delivery call click Grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.