Who Owns EA Sports?
A lot of people are wondering who owns EA Sports. Here’s a look at the company’s history and how it came to be the gaming giant it is today.
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Introduction
EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that creates and publishes sports video games. Many of EA Sports’ games are based on real professional leagues, but some, like FIFA, are entirely original properties. The company has published games for nearly every major sport, including soccer, American football, basketball, hockey, golf, mixed martial arts, and even cricket. In addition to its own games, EA Sports also licenses exclusive rights to publish games based on popular leagues like the NFL and MLB.
History
Electronic Arts (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. It is the second-largest gaming company in the Americas and Europe by revenue and market capitalization after Activision Blizzard and ahead of Take-Two Interactive and Ubisoft as of March 2018.
Current Owner
The current owner of EA Sports is Electronic Arts, or EA for short. EA is a video game company that was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. In addition to EA Sports, EA also owns other popular video game brands such as Battlefield, FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Live, and NHL.
Products
EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Though the company has been around since the early 1990s, it wasn’t until the release of Madden NFL in 1998 that EA Sports truly took off.
Today, EA Sports is one of the most well-known and successful game publishers in the world. The company’s lineup of sports games includes some of the most popular franchises in all of gaming, such as Madden NFL, FIFA, NHL, NBA Live, and more.
Though it has published games across a wide variety of sports, EA Sports’ bread and butter has always been football. In fact, the company’s very first game was a football game called John Madden Football. That game would go on to become one of the most successful video game franchises of all time, with annual releases becoming a staple for EA Sports.
Criticism
EA Sports has been the target of criticism for its exclusive relationships with certain leagues and players. For example, EA Sports signed an exclusive agreement with the NFL in 2004 that granted it the exclusive rights to create NFL-branded video games until 2012. This meant that other companies were not able to create NFL-branded games during that time period. Some critics argue that this prevented innovation and competition in the NFL video game market.
In 2010, EA Sports came under fire for its use of college player likenesses in its NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball video games. Players filed a class action lawsuit against EA Sports, alleging that the use of their likenesses without their permission violated their rights under federal and state law. The case is still pending.
In 2012, EA Sports came under criticism for its treatment of employees. In a report by Kotaku, several current and former employees alleged that they were required to work excessive overtime hours, were given unrealistic deadlines, and were not given proper credit for their work. One employee even alleged that he was fired after taking medical leave for cancer treatment. EA Sports has denied these allegations.
Conclusion
After much research, it appears that the answer to who owns EA Sports is quite complicated. While Electronic Arts does technically own the EA Sports brand, it seems that many of the individual sports franchises are actually owned by different entities. For example, it appears that the NFL franchise is actually owned by a company called CBC America, LLC. However, this ownership is likely due to licensing agreements between Electronic Arts and the NFL. Therefore, while EA may not technically own every single EA Sports franchise, they do have control over the overall brand.
