Nope. Long term licence would cost FORTUNE (Porsche brand thinks: you will be able to sell your Porsche game for THAT LONG? We want BILION DOLARS). And every game has it's sales potential, that goes to almost zero after some time. Why make 3 year license for NFS: Porsche, when it will stop selling well enough after 1 year?

For athletes, especially footballers this is virtually impossible. apart from the gazillions of Euro needed for this task, their commercial value is very fluctuating. A 35 year old footballer would probably be willing to make a long term deal, but for everybody younger than 30 such a deal would be dangerous at best.

What makes the whole matter worse is that nowadays individual players want to sell their likenesses individually. EA can staff a lot of lawyers full time just to secure those deals. And lawyers of that calibre don't come cheap (think 400€ the hour for one lawyer).

Personally, I would guess that EA isn't really making that much money of the FIFA franchise, considering how insanely expensive those licensees are. "Original IPs" are much more valuable than those.

Especially on PC. Gamers were raging for years "why FIFA on PC is inferior to X360?" , but the facts are simple - FIFA on PC isn't generating much income.

as for individual licensing, don't forget every fifa game has it's own "cover player" that is also on title screens. That deals are also expired. EA would have change every place where player face is on menus, etc etc. too.

Too much effort.

The only sport game I enjoyed was Great Courts on C-64...

I do have a question for the more law knowledgeable folks.
How about releasing those games for free? Would "expired licenses" still apply in that case?

Of course. It would violate the rights of license owners. If you release it for free, it doesn't change the fact you need "permission" to use real brands, names, etc etc.

Download it from torrents, dude, really. There's no other way.

For me it is Speedball 2. It should probably be doable in GOG, the PC version was quite good.

Then again, I consider many competitive online FPS games as sorts of sports games. Two teams trying to score more points than the other one, by making more flag captures (~goals). In fact for TFC there was even a map where the teams were playing soccer, with the added benefit of being able to shoot at the enemy team members. Soccer with guns if you will. :) (but frankly that map never was one of my favourites, too simple and boring).

That reminds me, do the sports games of today allow online gaming with proper teams, ie. you are not controlling the whole team, but only one team member?

I miss Mutant League Hockey...

Bitmap Brothers - we need you here!

This is the reason...

Oh god that game, I had it for the c64 and I swear between that game, Track and field and Huchback at the Olympics I had busted at least 6 or more joysticks and helped give me carpel tunnel.

I wouldn't be opposed to an indie developer working on a great sports title with open mod support and no licenses attached.

I recall all the various ways people came up with with the Track&Field coin-op game, in order to hit the run buttons as fast as they could. I think the best method was hitting the buttons with all your fingers except thumbs, hitting them like a fan. I never learned it well enough though, too young (small fingers) I guess.

Yep, Summer Games and Epyx Championship wrestling broke a few more. Ahh, the memories.