We all know that court decisions in favor of fantasy game providers tired of paying licensing fees for player statistics and information are good for those who put on the games. The flipside, though, is that NFL Players Inc. is out at least $3.5 million so far, according to a recent report.

Sports Business Journal reported Monday that the NFL Players Association’s annual report for the fiscal year ending Feb. 28 found revenues from fantasy licensing fees down to $1.2 million from $4.7 million in the previous year. That number figures to tumble even further going forward — particularly once the Yahoo! lawsuit is resolved.

According to SBJ, Yahoo! accounted for more than half of last year’s total, shelling out $841,329 in licensing fees to the NFLPA. CBS Sports, on the other hand, dropped from $1.49 million in the previous fiscal year to just $55,000 for “player appearances” last year. CBS reportedly stopped paying licensing fees before filing suit last fall against the players association.

Among the other big names: Fox Sports’ payout dipped just to $276,218 from $363,876, with most of the remaining money reportedly going to cover LaDainian Tomlinson’s role as spokesperson for Fox’s fantasy football. Sporting News, which said it did pay for a license last year, nevertheless dropped from $73,805 in fee spending to $50,000. Sporting News Online vice president and general manager Jeff Gerttula said he didn’t know what the company would do “going forward,” in light of the series of court rulings that deem such licenses unnecessary.

According to SBJ, the exact size of the revenue drop for NFL Players — the merchandising wing of the NFLPA — is unknown because some companies pay similar fees as part of larger licensing deals that also cover other areas.

Tags: cbc v. mlbam, CBS v. NFLPA, fantasy football, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, nflpa, yahoo v. nflpa

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Lead Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.