Electronic Arts revealed earlier this year that it’s planning to add a college basketball game to its ever-expanding roster of sports franchises. Then 2K Games came out hours later and indicated it was doing the same. Now new reporting suggests both publishers have been at war behind the scenes trying to lock up the deals needed to make an NCAA basketball game a reality.
Sports Business Journal reports that while EA won a bidding round earlier this year with the Collegiate Licensing Company for the rights to the NCAA brand, 2K Games has moved forward with its own college basketball game by trying to negotiate brand partnerships with individual colleges 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 school announced on Thursday.
Bring the Madness. Let’s run it back. #CBB #ItsInTheGame pic.twitter.com/iBNhGxn2yj
— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) June 30, 2025
The campus has been quiet for too long 😏 https://t.co/AuqoX5u5Qr
— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) June 30, 2025
EA is apparently very unhappy about this. According to Sports Business Journal, it wanted the rights to everything in NCAA divisional basketball on both men’s and women’s leagues, which would give it the sort of exclusivity stranglehold it long had with the NFL in its Madden series. And if EA doesn’t get its way, sources told Sports Business Journal the publisher might abandon the upcoming game 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 VP Sean O’Brien told SBJ in a statement. “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.”
Basically, 2K Games, which was reportedly part of the NCAA bidding war but lost to EA, has decided to move ahead with a college basketball game regardless. While it abandoned its Hoops franchise over a decade ago, it’s been releasing NBA2K every year and could quickly spin off a new version of it for college teams or, as SBJ reports, possibly position it as an add-on or expansion for the existing franchise.
EA, which also abandoned its basketball franchise over a decade ago, will have to start from scratch. Recent reporting suggests a new game would be years away at best and possibly not arrive until 2028 or later. Unless it can get the NCAA and its member schools to pull the plug on 2K’s game, it’ll be coming in late. A big part of what helped EA Sports College Football explode in popularity last year was years of pent-up demand. Now both publishers are in a race to see who can cash in on the latest untapped market for annual sports games.