Sonny Vaccaro on EA Sports video game: 'The athletes have won'

Nearly 15 years ago, shoe company czar Sonny Vaccaro struck out time and again in calls to 15 former prominent college athletes before he phoned Ed O’Bannon. After seeing his likeness used in an EA Sports video game without his permission, the former UCLA men’s basketball star agreed to Vaccaro’s request. He became the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that ultimately left the NCAA vulnerable to further legal challenges.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning, when Vaccaro awoke to a message from an On3 reporter, learning for the first time that FBS athletes finally will have an opportunity to benefit financially, albeit likely modestly, from their likenesses used in a new 2024 EA Sports College Football video game. The agreement has not been finalized yet, but a source told On3’s Pete Nakos the cash pool was in the $5 million neighborhood, which would pay out to $500 per player.

The dollar figure is immaterial. The breakthrough, in Vaccaro’s words, is “landmark.” He called Wednesday “one of the happiest days in my life.”

“The wheels of justice have turned very slowly,” Vaccaro told On3. “But O’Bannon and others made this particular incident in the world of justice at least have a chance to go forward. What the court cases have done, and what I’m seeing today, is a long, tenuous road. A tenuous road where the falsehood of amateur athletics, led by the universities and colleges concerning athletes, has now been destroyed even more than a court case [achieved]. 

“Because the co-conspirator was EA Sports – and the NCAA – but they [EA Sports] are and were at least understandable that they were doing something they were allowed to do, but didn’t have to do, because of the rules. They have just torn up that contract. I have a big, big smile … The athletes have won, one battle at a time. And there’s no going back on my personal belief and hope that all the antiques of the old days of amateur athletics tied to the NCAA and college sports, that the first cup has really been broken now. This, to me, is landmark, because it’s the company. EA Sports started it. The whole thing is beautiful.”

Vaccaro pleased athletes can benefit from NIL

Sonny Vaccaro said there’s been a brighter smile on his face lately. At 83, he is seeing the NCAA’s antiquated amateur model continue to take on water and student-athletes finally have the opportunity to benefit financially, whether it’s from NIL opportunities, the door the EA Sports news will unlock, or a potential revenue-sharing model that may be on the horizon.

He wishes he could say he long thought this new era would ultimately come. But some 15 years ago, when Vaccaro was barnstorming the nation’s best law schools, lambasting the NCAA and chastising schools for profiting off images of their former athletes, his hopes were more realistic. He just wanted some enterprising reporter and ambitious lawyer to pick up the reform baton and push for change in a system where the revenue only flowed upwards.

When he called the 15 former college athletes in 2009, all applauded his efforts but declined to be the lead plaintiff for various reasons, mostly because they didn’t want to risk hurting their alma maters. But the call to O’Bannon, who led the Bruins to the 1995 national title, was serendipitous because he had just seen his image – that he was not paid for – in the video game authorized by the NCAA.

O’Bannon signed on as the lead plaintiff in a class-action suit that ultimately included 19 other athletes. In 2014, a U.S. district judge decided the NCAA’s use of names, images and likenesses of college athletes without compensation violated antitrust law. Judge Claudia Wilken ruled schools could pay football and men’s basketball players up to $5,000 per year, with the money going into a trust and being available to athletes after they leave college.

The following year, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Wilken’s ruling on the payments of $5,000 but upheld the antitrust violation. Also in 2015, the NCAA addressed one aspect of Wilken’s ruling by passing legislation to allow schools to increase the value of an athletic scholarship to include the cost of attendance. Finally, in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not hear the NCAA’s appeal of the O’Bannon case, leaving in place lower court rulings that found amateurism rules violated federal antitrust law but prohibited payments to student-athletes.

While both sides claimed victory, this was clear: The effect left the NCAA vulnerable to more legal challenges.

Once the O’Bannon case concluded, Vaccaro recalls telling his wife, Pam, “We’re halfway home now.” On Wednesday, he said, “We are home now. I’ve never said that before. We cracked the bubble.”

Sonny Vaccaro: ‘There is no going back now’

Long a polarizing figure, a self-described renegade and architect of the controversial sneaker company-funded grassroots basketball landscape, Sonny Vaccaro late in life is having a moment. In the recently released movie “Air,” Matt Damon plays a mid-1980s Vaccaro, who courts Michael Jordan for a Nike endorsement deal that ultimately revolutionizes sports culture, marketing and the sneaker industry. 

For the movie premiere, Vaccaro brought his wife, UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin and his wife, and O’Bannon and his wife. In the movie’s postscript, Vaccaro is credited with being a key figure in the O’Bannon v. NCAA suit, which demanded colleges compensate student-athletes for the commercial use of their name and likeness. When that message appeared on the screen, Vaccaro and O’Bannon smiled.

And now Vaccaro sees a world in which players depicted in the EA Sports video game series, now and in the coming years, will benefit, even if the financial benefit is modest.

“It’s going to live forever now,” Vaccaro said of the O’Bannon case. “Tell EA Sports, ‘Sonny Vaccaro wants to congratulate you. It took you a while, but God bless you.’ There is no going back now.”