EA Sports
Formerly | Electronic Arts Sports Network (1991–1993) |
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Company type | Division |
Industry | Video games |
Founded | 1991 |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Daryl Holt (COO and VP) Cam Weber (president) |
Products |
|
Parent | Electronic Arts |
Subsidiaries |
|
Website | ea.com/sports |
EA Sports is a division of
Most games under this brand are developed by
For several years after the brand was created, all EA Sports games began with a stylized five-second video introducing the brand with Andrew Anthony voicing its motto, "It's in the game", meaning that its games aimed at simulating the actual sports as authentically and completely as possible;[1] Anthony was never compensated for his appearance and did it merely as a favour to a friend.[2]
Unlike some other sports game companies, EA Sports has no special ties to a single platform, which means that all games are released for the best-selling active platforms, sometimes long after most of the other companies abandon them. For example,
In June 2023, EA announced a restructuring of the company, having EA Entertainment and EA Sports as two separate divisions inside the business, with Cam Weber becoming the president of the division.[5]
History
Exclusivity deals
In 2003, EA purchased the license to
On December 13, 2004, EA Sports signed an exclusive deal with the National Football League (NFL) and its Players' Union for five years.[6][7][8] On February 12, 2008, EA Sports announced the extension of its exclusive deal until the 2012 NFL season.[9]
Less than a month after the NFL Exclusive deal on January 11, 2005, EA Sports signed a four-year exclusive deal with the
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.[11]
EA lost the rights for
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.[12][13][14][15] 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
On June 4, 2012, EA signed a "multi-year, multi-product" partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, taking over from THQ.[18]
Following the release of
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.[19]
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.[16] 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.[20] At the time of this announcement, EA stated they had no other agreements with other NCAA sports.[16] 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.[21]
EA has had deals with FIFA to use the FIFA name and branding for its EA FIFA series, in additional 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.[22] 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".[23] 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.[22] The last game released under the FIFA banner was 2022's FIFA 23.[24]
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
PC games
For the 2003 game year, and from years 2006 to 2008, EA published compilations of EA Sports titles for Windows Called the "Year Number" Collection.[26][27][28][29]
In June 2009, EA Sports announced that for 2010, the games
The head of EA Sports at that time,
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 with Codemasters, the F1 series would be published by EA on PC.
PlayStation Home
This section may be too long and excessively detailed. (May 2016) |
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.[32] 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. The Upstairs had four poker tables that users could play at any time. 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.[33] 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.
The July 2, 2009 update added golf and another poker room making four rooms for the Complex; the EA Sports Racing Complex, the EA Sports Golf Complex, the EA Sports Complex Green Poker Room, and the EA Sports Complex Red Poker Room. The Racing Complex features Racing with a total of eight karts; four on each side of the Complex. The Golf Complex features two Practice Ranges for golfing; one range on each side of the Complex. A Golf Pro-shop is coming soon for the Golf Complex. The Green Poker Room featured four green poker tables that users can play anytime. The Red Poker Room featured four red poker tables but requires users to have 2,000 points to play.
On July 16, 2009, EA Sports released another room for the Complex making five rooms for the Complex. This room is the game space for Fight Night Round 4 called "Club Fight Night" featuring a mini-game called Club DJ and coming soon, robot boxing.[34]
On July 30, 2009, EA Sports added a Black Poker Table to the EA Sports Complex Red Poker Room for the higher level players. In time, there will be a room dedicated for this table just like the Green Poker Room and the Red Poker Room. They also added a fifth green table to the Green Poker Room. The update also included the addition of the EA Sports Pro Shop where users can purchase full boxing outfits and furniture from Fight Night Round 4. The Pro Shop is found in the Racing Complex. The August 16, 2009 update replaced the fifth green table in the Green Poker Room with a red table. They also reduced the number of points for the Black Table from 20,000 to 10,000. The August 27, 2009 update separated the scoreboards for each level of play – Green, Red, and Black – and into Daily boards and Season boards (left side and right side), improved card readability, additional rail seating near the poker tables, player removal on lockup while playing poker, and player buy-in refund on removal (does not refund on Home disconnect) while playing poker.
On October 9, 2009, EA Sports released the EA Sports Complex to the Japanese version of Home. They also released
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
Technology
Franchises
Most EA Sports games are distinguished by year, as most games are released on a yearly basis. Nevertheless, as EA Sports is the leading purchaser of official licenses, it is not uncommon that in a short span several games of the same sport but with different licenses are released: FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 was shortly followed by World Cup 98, all in the wake of FIFA Soccer Manager in 1997 (as EA has owned the license for the FIFA World Cup, which happens regularly in four-year intervals, since 1998), and college football and basketball games are released that are based on Madden NFL and NBA Live, respectively.
Series | Sport | First release | Latest release | Upcoming release |
---|---|---|---|---|
Super Mega Baseball | Baseball | Super Mega Baseball 4 (2023) | ||
Madden NFL | American football | John Madden Football (1988) | Madden NFL 24 (2023) | |
NHL | Ice hockey | NHL Hockey (1991) | NHL 24 (2023) | |
EA Sports FC | Association football | EA Sports FC Mobile (2023) | EA Sports FC 24 (2023) | |
UFC | Mixed martial arts | EA Sports UFC (2014) | EA Sports UFC 5 (2023) | |
F1 | Formula One | Original: F1 2000 (2000) Codemasters: F1 2009 (2009) |
Original: F1 Career Challenge (2003) Codemasters: F1 23 (2023) |
F1 24 (2024) |
PGA Tour | Golf | PGA Tour Golf (1990) | EA Sports PGA Tour (2023) | |
WRC | World Rally Championship | EA Sports WRC (2023) | ||
NCAA/College Football
|
American football (College) | Bill Walsh College Football (1993) | NCAA Football 14 (2013) | College Football 25 (2024)[39]
|
Former
References
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- ^ "EA Sports Andrew Anthony Talks Madden NFL 25". Archived from the original on December 12, 2021 – via www.youtube.com.
- ^ "Hackers leak full EA data after failed extortion attempt". July 31, 2021. Archived from the original on October 19, 2022. Retrieved August 5, 2021 – via The Record.
- ^ Jones, Rory (August 2, 2022). "LaLiga signs €30m-a-year EA Sports naming rights deal covering all competitions". SportsPro. London.
- Redwood City: Electronic Arts. June 20, 2023. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
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- ^ Rovell, Darren (December 13, 2004). "All Madden, all the time". ESPN. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
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- ^ Fahey, Rob (January 11, 2005). "EA continues sports assault with exclusive AFL deal". Gamesindustry.biz. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
- ^ Jenkins, David (April 11, 2005). "Electronic Arts Signs Exclusive Deal With NCAA". Gamastura. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
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- ^ a b c Ivan, Tom (February 2, 2021). "EA stock reaches all-time high after it announces new college football game". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
- ^ Bailey, Kat (February 5, 2021). "How EA Is Bringing Back College Football and Sidestepping the NCAA's Biggest Problems". Vice. Retrieved February 5, 2021.
- ^ "UFC Signs Video Game Deal With EA Sports". MMAWeekly.com. June 5, 2012. Retrieved June 8, 2021.
- ^ Sarkar, Samit (May 28, 2020). "EA maintains exclusive Madden NFL license in multiyear renewal". Polygon. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
- ^ Murphy, Dan (February 22, 2021). "Notre Dame won't participate in new EA Sports college football game until NIL rules finalized". ESPN. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
- ^ Good, Owen (May 5, 2021). "EA Sports is getting back into baseball". Polygon. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
- ^ a b Panja, Tariq (October 13, 2021). "EA Sports Is Planning for a FIFA Without FIFA". The New York Times. Retrieved October 13, 2021.
- ^ Wales, Matt (October 15, 2021). "FIFA says football gaming "must involve more than one party controlling and exploiting all rights"". Eurogamer. Retrieved October 15, 2021.
- ^ Nelson, Will (August 2, 2022). "'FIFA 23' career mode to include real-world managers for the first time". NME. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
- ^ Owen S. Good (March 2, 2022). "EA Sports removes Russian teams from NHL, FIFA video games". Polygon. Vox Media. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
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- ^ Robinson, Andy (July 3, 2008). "PC News: Peter Moore comes clean on EA SPORTS PC". Computer and Video Games. Future Publishing Limited. Archived from the original on July 4, 2008. Retrieved May 29, 2008.
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- ^ Locust Star (April 23, 2009). "EA SPORTS Complex Now Live in PlayStation Home". PlayStation Blog. Sony Computer Entertainment. Archived from the original on December 12, 2009. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
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- ^ Locust Star (November 25, 2009). "This Week in PlayStation Home: New Red Bull Space + Event, Fight Night Producer Chat & More". Sony Computer Entertainment. Archived from the original on November 28, 2009. Retrieved November 25, 2009.
- ^ Locust Star (January 6, 2010). "This Week in PlayStation Home: Waterfall Terrace Personal Space, NCAA Football Jerseys, + Loads More!". Sony Computer Entertainment. Archived from the original on January 9, 2010. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
- ^ "Origin Access". Origin.com. EA Access. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- ^ "EA Sports to release college football game in summer 2024". ESPN.com. November 22, 2022.