.svg){kind=link}
The story
Exclusivity deals
In 2003, EA purchased the license to NASCAR for six years, ending competition from Papyrus and Infogrames. The NASCAR license expired in 2009 and the NASCAR license would be owned by Polyphony Digital for the Gran Turismo series starting with Gran Turismo 5, and also Eutechnyx for NASCAR The Game series from 2011 to 2015.
On December 13, 2004, EA Sports signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League (NFL) and its Players' Union for five years. On February 12, 2008, EA Sports announced the extension of its exclusive deal until the 2012 NFL season.
Less than a month after the NFL Exclusive deal on January 11, 2005, EA Sports signed a four-year exclusive deal with the Arena Football League (AFL).
On April 11, 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and EA Sports signed a deal to grant EA Sports the sole rights to produce college football games for six years.
EA lost the rights for Major League Baseball (MLB) games to 2K Sports in 2005, ending EA's MVP series; however, EA made NCAA Baseball games in 2006 and 2007 after losing the MLB license.
In January 2008, EA Sports decided not to renew their NCAA College Baseball license while they evaluated the status of their MVP game engine.
In 2005, EA Sports and ESPN signed a massive 15-year deal for ESPN to be integrated into EA Sports video games from Sega and 2K. EA's use of the ESPN license has steadily increased over the early life of the deal. EA's early usage of the ESPN license began with ESPN Radio and a sports ticker in titles like Madden NFL, NBA Live, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and NCAA Baseball and Football. The ESPN integration now includes streaming podcasts, text articles (including content only available previously to ESPN Insider subscribers), and ESPN Motion video (including such programs as Pardon the Interruption).
The federal district case O'Bannon v. NCAA, decided in 2014, involved the rights of college athletes to be able to control their likenesses in downstream products from NCAA properties. The case specifically concerned EA's NCAA Basketball 09 when it was first filed in 2009, leading EA to abandon the NCAA Basketball line that year. The case was ruled in favor of the college athletes, which made licensing of these for EA's games more difficult. While EA had continued the NCAA Football series, the NCAA terminated its license agreement with EA in 2013 due to several factors, including the O'Bannon case as well as issues over comparable licensing fees to the professional sports games.
Read the full text
On June 4, 2012, EA signed a "multi-year, multi-product" partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, taking over from THQ.
Following the release of Rory McIlroy PGA Tour in 2015, EA Sports announced that they would end its PGA Tour series after 25 years, with the said game was pulled from digital storefronts in May 2018. 2K Sports announced that they would assume their licensing agreement with the PGA Tour beginning with the release of The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour in 2018.
The NFL, the NFL's Players' Association, and EA confirmed its exclusivity contract for NFL sports simulation games in May 2020, lasting through at the 2025–2026 NFL season with an optional one-year extension. The new contract allows EA to develop NFL games outside of the typical EA Madden titles, including for mobile games.
In February 2021, EA announced it was returning to college sports with a EA College Football game to be released within the next couple of years. As planned, the game will not use any player likenesses, but instead bypasses the issues with the NCAA by licensing all other branding related to college football such as team names, uniforms, and stadiums through the Collegiate Licensing Company, as at the time of the announcement, the NCAA had not yet reached definitive rules on appropriate payment to players for their likeliness. If such rules are established by the time of the game's release, EA said they would then include player likenesses. However, Notre Dame stated that until such rules are in place, they declined to be part of EA's game. At the time of this announcement, EA stated they had no other agreements with other NCAA sports. Later that month, EA purchased Codemasters, developers of the F1 series, therefore reclaiming the rights to publish F1 games.
EA acquired Metalhead Software in May 2021, the developers of the Super Mega Baseball series. EA stated that they are looking to taking the core aspects of that series to integrate with licensing from MLB to publish a licensed baseball game again in the future.
EA has had deals with FIFA to use the FIFA name and branding for its EA FIFA series, in addition to over 300 separate deals with the leagues and teams for their names, logos, and player likeness rights. According to The New York Times in October 2021, FIFA had started discussions with EA in the prior two years on renewing these rights towards an exclusivity deal but with several caveats that has made negotiations difficult. Among FIFA's requests was increasing the exclusive license fee to $1 billion over each four-year period between FIFA World Cups, and limiting the scope of this exclusivity to association football simulation games, while EA wanted to expand the branding into new video game ventures such as esports using the game, an area that FIFA wanted to either keep to themselves or license to other developers to expand their own revenues. FIFA issued a statement following this report that stated they had reached an impasse with EA on the negotiations. FIFA's position was that it has "a duty to support its 211 member associations to fully capitalise on the inherent opportunities that have been emerging over the recent years. As part of this strategy, FIFA also commits to continuing to organise skill-based eSports tournaments under the umbrella of the recently launched FIFAe competition structure and consumer brand." To that end, FIFA believed it was necessary that any license agreement "must involve more than one party controlling and exploiting all rights". EA has considered that abandoning the FIFA name would have little impact on the player experience since the league and team licenses would be unaffected. EA had trademarked EA Sports FC as a potential replacement name for the series. The last game released under the FIFA banner was 2022's FIFA 23.
On March 2, 2022, EA, along with FIFA, NHL and the NHL Players' Association, the IIHF and F1 announced that they removed any of their names and logo licensing rights involving the Russian and Belarusian teams in both FIFA 22 and NHL 22, citing the recent events related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The removals from both games also affected the development of F1 22; with Nikita Mazepin of the Haas F1 Team being replaced by Kevin Magnussen, the Russian Grand Prix being removed from the lineup, and the logos of Mazepin's sponsor Uralkali being removed.
PC games
For the 2003 game year, and from years 2006 to 2008, EA published compilations of EA Sports titles for Windows called the EA Sports Collection; for example, the 2006 lineup was called the EA Sports 06 Collection.
In June 2009, EA Sports announced that for 2010, the games Madden NFL, NCAA Football, NASCAR, NHL, NBA Live, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour would not be shipped for PC platforms. The NCAA Football series had not been released on the PC since 1998, the Tiger Woods series' last PC game was Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, the NASCAR series had not had a PC version since NASCAR SimRacing in 2005, and the last Madden series to be released on PC was Madden NFL 08. The NHL series' last PC game was NHL 09. Likewise, NBA Live 08 was the final PC version for NBA Live.
The head of EA Sports at that time, Peter Moore, cited piracy and the fact that the "PC as a platform for authentic, licensed, simulation sports games has declined radically in the past three years as the next generation consoles [...] have attracted millions of consumers."
However, the FIFA series continues to be released on PC, and for the first time since 2008, Madden NFL 19 was released for PC. Following EA's purchase of Codemasters, the F1 series would be published by EA on PC. In 2026, EA release College Football 27 in PC, marking the first game to be release on that platform.
PlayStation Home
On April 23, 2009, EA Sports released the long-awaited "EA Sports Complex" space for the PlayStation 3's online community-based service, PlayStation Home in the European and North American versions. In the Complex, users can play a series of mini-games, including poker, kart racing, golf, and it also features a Virtual EA Shop. There are also a number of advertisements for upcoming EA Sports games. Each mini-game that the Complex features has a reward or rewards. Heavy Water, a company dedicated to developing for Home, developed the EA Sports Complex for EA Sports.
Originally, the Complex just featured two rooms: the EA Sports Complex and the EA Sports Complex Upstairs. The EA Sports Complex featured racing and had a golfing range that was unavailable to play. With the June 18, 2009 update, the Complex's name changed to the EA Sports Racing Complex and the Upstairs changed to the EA Sports Complex Green Poker Room. Other than the name change, the update took away the golfing range and added four more karts for users to play Racing at and it also added one red poker table to the poker room.
On October 9, 2009, EA Sports released the EA Sports Complex to the Japanese version of Home. They also released NFL jerseys for every team in the league for purchase inside of the EA Sports Complex and in Home's shopping complex. EA Sports have also teamed up with the Home team to produce and distribute exclusive virtual items that serve to support National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
On August 2, 2011, EA Sports launched the EA Sports Season Ticket subscription service. It was discontinued in 2015 and it was replaced with the similar EA Access service.
From Wikipedia’s article on EA Sports, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4