Love Sega Hate Glazer

It's not as simple as you are trying to make out.

You may remember if you are old enough that back in the day the original Championship Manager and other games around that time like Premier Manager (Even FIFA in the first couple of versions) didn't use real players or clubs because they didn't have licences to do so. None of the leagues or competitions back then had collective rights deals so they had to be done club by club. Most big clubs back then had games branded just around the club.

It wasn't until later where participation in competitions required clubs to give that competition non-exclusive rights to all data connected to the club which they could sell. The clubs did retain rights to sell that same data themselves though. With the PL they split these rights into different uses and when it comes to video games they split them even further so rights for a management game are different to the rights for something like FIFA. For a while SI held the PL rights for the PL when the game was still CM but when EA decided to release FIFA Soccer Manager they went out and outbid everyone else to grab the management licence as well (I believe they also have the mobile licence) and even when they stopped making FIFA Soccer Manager they kept just buying all the video games rights not just the one they needed for FIFA.

SI and EA have had an agreement though, SI can use a select amount of data without EA directly sueing them or getting the Premier League involved as long as they don't infringe in other areas. It does mean SI operate in a grey area, EA are not allowed to resell rights so there is no formal agreement and SI don't pay a penny and legally have no right to use it

Clubs have been ignoring it for a while but there has been some changes over the last few years. Konami have struggled to compete with FIFA despite PES having better gameplay because EA have the licences, licences are worth a fortune for game companies, its why really poor movie tie-ins are still a thing because having the name of a popular movie can take a game that would lose a fortune because its poor and see it make a massive profit. So Konami have been going after individual clubs, the first big-name they got was Juve which saw them get removed from FM but they have been growing their club level licences (and some less appealing leagues as well) and United are one of their more recent ones. Some of the clubs are rights just for specific types of games, Arsenal for example only sold the FIFA/PES style rights to Konami (FIFA can still use them through the PL licence) but both Juve and United got significant more in exchange for all video game rights.

And they pay a pretty penny for that licence as well. The Console/PC version sells in excess of 100million copies every year (and the mobile version sells even more). When you consider that they sell for £30+ you can get an idea of the money they have to throw at licences and for the clubs as the licensee they get a small percentage of every sale. So if Konami expresses concern that they are paying so much money while someone else is using some of that data for free then they are going to put pressure on the clubs to sort it out and clubs can't afford to risk deals by not taking is serious.

The other thing that's changed is SI have increasingly been doing club editions, they have been paying other clubs to do branded versions including all the data and images that is sold only through the club. So they are using some clubs for free and others for nothing. If they were paying clubs who have deals with Konami they could most likely work something out where SI pay and Konami relinquish the Management rights and Konami get a discount.

The problem SI has however is FM sells 2million copies a year. Not an insignificant amount but way less than PES sell and certainly less than FIFA, they don't have the resources to buy every right they need even if others weren't inflating the prices by going for the full rights, not just the rights they need for their game.

So its much more complex, we are talking about billions with more than just the clubs being stakeholders. TBH the biggest issue isn't any of the clubs or companies but the licencing system in general, its way too complex because its basically the wild west, everyone involved makes up their own rules