During the 2000s, EA Sports’ Madden and FIFA franchises forged important competitive niches.
Franchises such as NFL GameDay and NFL 2K regularly competed with Madden in the marketplace until EA purchased exclusive rights to the NFL and its players union in 2004. The deal, which has extinguished the vast majority of competition in the football sim genre, extends through 2012.
EA Sports, the Electronic Arts division that produces these sims, is responsible for the most successful sports franchises of all time. From niche sports games such as Cricket, Rugby and NASCAR to Tiger Woods PGA Tour and Fight Night, EA Sports has a hand in every conceivable corner of the sports gaming market. NBA, NHL, Madden and, most profitably (thanks in large part to the NFL’s substantial licensing fees), the FIFA franchise have all established the EA Sports brand at the top of the food chain in this genre.
EA Sports is known for pursing long-term exclusivity deals with its franchises, having done so most prominently with NASCAR, MLB, NCAA, NFL and FIFA. This practice has been controversial for a number of reasons, not least of all because the monopolistic tendencies of the leagues and developer tend to squash hope for creativity and innovation in sports gaming. Additionally, the price of the game is perceived as quite high against no competition while the level of innovation (or, rather, the lack thereof) has left many players and customers vocally dissatisfied. Still, the release of a new Madden game is an annual commercial event in the USA, a guaranteed windfall for EA.
As a competitive game, Madden’s history is undeniably rich. Sports games in general require no great leap of imagination to inspire competition among players. While football was becoming the most popular and profitable sport in the United States, Madden games were expanding the empire to millions of gamers every year.
The "small" competitive stages such as house-rules cash games and six figure underground rings made up a large percentage of top tier players’ earnings. Madden professionals such as Eric "Problem" Wright publicly claimed half a million in underground earnings alone.
Madden has spawned a national scene, filled with local tournaments from Tennessee to Oregon, played for hundreds to thousands of dollars in prizes for a single competition.
The "big" stages included the Madden Challenge, a $50,000 tournament that was heavily promoted by ESPN (an American cable sports network with great interest in promoting American football), the NFL (who obviously desired to promote its league to young gamers) and EA, rounding out a freakishly powerful group of marketers and salesmen.
Madden Nation was an ESPN reality show from 2005 (Madden 2006) to 2008 (Madden 2009). Each season, about a dozen players traveled the United States competing in tournaments with an NFL player sponsor. The finals in New York City featured a $100,000 grand prize.
For several years, competitive Madden was one of the most well known esports in America thanks in large part to its backers and its visibility on ESPN.
It also attracted a number of critics. From within the Madden faithful, many complained that the Madden Challenge perverted the sim nature of the game, taking the real football away in the name of exploiting every possible advantage within the software for a win. This is not a rare complaint for any competitive game to get but given the simulation and realism roots of Madden, it does seem to hold a bit more ground than it might in a genre such as RTS or FPS.
As is the case with many EA Sports titles (and countless titles from the world’s largest publishers in general), Madden has been criticized as a "money farm", rarely improving in significant ways from year to year but somehow managing to charge customers some of the highest prices in the industry. A significant slice of the game’s success has to do with successes within the marketing and licensing divisions at EA rather than within the design department.
At its worst, televised Madden competition can seem an awful lot like reality television and bad professional wrestling. Unwarranted machismo, contrived personalities, make believe rivalries and relatively little focus on the game itself has repelled many players and fans in the gaming community.
Shows such as Madden Challenge (which showed up on the failed gaming cable channel GamePlay HD) provided a paycheck for out of work reality TV writers as well as a small group of top gamers but did little to build a sustainable competitive scene.
Today, hundreds of thousands of dollars are given away as official EA tournament prizes for Madden competitions, making it one of the most lucrative competitive games period. Even without a significant television presence for the competitive scene since Madden Nation was cancelled in 2009, the community has sustained one of the most active scenes in console gaming.
Beyond competitive gaming, in the big picture of the gaming industry, the success of the Madden franchise is enormous. More than 85 million copies have been sold as of 2010, making it one of the best selling franchises in gaming history.
While the Madden series has long held sway over the sports market in North America, the rest of the world has a different, beautiful game to focus on. In the 1990s, a more competitive and global market would emerge for association football games. The soccer game market has been quite lucrative and well populated since the 1980s. Now, EA Sport’s FIFA franchise and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer fight for supremacy around the world in the soccer sim game.
While the Madden series has muscled its competition out of the picture, EA Sports has never had the soccer market to themselves. Among other games, Sensible Soccer, Kick Off and Match Day attracted players before EA’s FIFA series materialized.
The FIFA franchise has a significant competitive history. In the middle of the 2000s, as the game was used by major competitions such as the World Cyber Games (FIFA being one of two franchises to be played at every WCG event for 11 years as of 2011) and the ESL Pro Series, hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes were doled out in competition.
The competitive scene has slowed and started with the new decade. The major German league, EPS, awarded a grand prize of only €3,000 in 2010, a relatively small number in the context of a growing competitive gaming industry. Meanwhile, Virgin Gaming offered $50,000 for a 2011 tournament.
EA sponsors the annual "EA Sports Challenge", a $10 buy-in tournament (as of 2012) for games such as Madden, FIFA, NHL, EA MMA and Fight Night that concludes with a $1,000,000 (combined prize money) tournament. VirginGaming.com, the result of Virgin Group’s 2010 acquisition of WorldGaming.com, runs the competitions.
"Players wager sums, described as ‘transactions’ and ‘challenges,’ against one another, and not the house," wrote Eric Taub for the New York Times. “The companies make money by taking service fees, a percentage of the winnings off the top. In Virgin Gaming’s case, it is 12 percent of the amount wagered.”
FIFA continues to be supported worldwide by major esports organizations such as ESL, WCG and ESWC but there are no active salaried rosters for the game.