EA Signs Deal With ESPN

Darren Rovell on espn.com is reporting that EA, ESPN announce 15-year gaming partnership.  This comes a little over a month after EA signed an exclusive rights deal with the NFL and NFLPA (CNN Money’s Game Over article about the deal).

The EA-ESPN deal starts in 2006 (there is one year left on the deal between ESPN and Sega) and is for all of EA’s sports titles.

While ESPN branding certainly isn’t as powerful as exclusive rights, it certainly can’t hurt EA and is leaving Sega in a very tough spot for future games.  Visual Concepts, Sega’s sports studio, did not return calls to Rovell.

Sports gamers are now left waiting to see if any real competition will exist in the sports gaming marketplace in two years.  The future looks bleak for football games (which outsell baseball and basketball games combined) and with now having to re-brand its games Sega could be in a very rough spot.

Let’s look at the video games from the other three major team sports, with the criteria being it’s licensed from the league and union (real teams and players), is available on at least one major console (PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube):

Baseball:
MVP Baseball (EA)
ESPN Major League Baseball 2K5 (Sega, soon to be sans ESPN)
MLB 2006 (Sony’s 989 Studios, only available on the PS2)
MLB SlugFest: Loaded (Midway; no announcement of new game for this season, Slugfest came out mid-season last year)
All-Star Baseball from Acclaim is dead (Acclaim went bankrupt)

Basketball:
NBA Live 2005 (EA)
NBA Street V3 (EA)
ESPN NBA 2K5 (Sega…)
NCAA March Madness 2005 (EA)
ESPN College Hoops 2K5 (Sega…)
NBA Ballers (Midway; and this was released towards the end of last season, there doesn’t appear to be a new title for this season)

Hockey:
NHL 2005 (EA)
ESPN NHL 2K5 (Sega…)
Gretzky NHL 2005 (989 Studios, PS2-only)

My guess is this list may thin out over the next couple of years.  Sure, there are PC simulators, and handheld and mobile games coming out, but the consoles are where the market is.

Update (Jan 19th): From gamesindustry.biz - Publisher Take Two, whose plans for its sports game franchise have been hard hit by a string of exclusive license deals announced by rival Electronic Arts, may be in talks to sign a similar exclusive with Major League Baseball.

Posted by David M Singer on Jan 18, 2005 at 03:01 AM

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