Take-Two Interactive CEO: 'Our Relationship With NBA Strikes A Sound Balance'

came out with impressive fourth-quarter earnings February 3 on back of increased sales of NBA 2k15 and the Grand Theft Auto series.

Strauss Zelnick, chairman & CEO of Take-Two Interactive, was recently on

to talk about gamers' interest in NBA 2k15 and the rights' arrangement with the NBA.

When asked if consumer interest in NBA 2k15 decreased during the recent football season, especially among younger consumers just getting into NBA fandom Zelnick responded contrarily, replying that interest is up.

“The sport is so reactive these days. Just as one example, you have the opportunity to buy virtual currency in our games and to spend it on the games and that’s spending what we call recurrent consumer spending is up 90 percent year-over-year. That’s just one barometer of the explosion of the interest.”

He continued, “We are also seeing massive explosion of interest in the international markets. We have the highest rated sports title. It’s bigger than football, and we think it bodes really well for the sport and obviously for us.”

“Everything that we do is expensive. It’s expensive to make the best games in the business, which is our aim and more often than not our result,” Zelnick replied.

“It’s expensive to market them. And obviously the rights are expensive. At the end of the day, the best rights arrangement are where it’s a win-win – where the intellectual property owner creates the value in the brand and where the licensee (in this case us) does great things with it.

“That’s good for the brand, it’s good for the consumers and naturally it’s good for us.”

“I would say our relationship with the NBA strikes a sound balance. We know that we are a very important fee-payer to the NBA, as we ought to be. We also know that it’s a good piece of business for us.”