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It certainly looks that way. As part of a lawsuit involving retired NFL player rights, a 2007 e-mail from NFLPA executive Clay Walker to an NFLPA attorney was released. That email reads:
I was able to forge this deal with the [Pro Football Hall of Fame] that provides them with 400K per year (which is significantly below market rate) in exchange for the HOF player rights. EA owes me a huge favour because of that threat was enough to persuade Take Two to back off its plans, leaving EA as the only professional football videogame manufacturer out there.
Video game publishers can pounce on that white hot Arena Football League licence, now that EA has opted not to renew its deal with the faster-paced, indoor-only take on American football. According to a report from the Sports Business Journal, EA has had just about enough arena football, coming to the end of its three-year agreement with the league and choosing not to invest in the AFL.
Contrary to popular belief, Madden does not sell itself. Some people need convincing it's an improvement over last year, some people need reminding it's time for a new Madden and some, like myself, need convincing it's any better than NFL2K5. In order to get the word out (the word being "BUY MADDEN"), then, EA need to spend money on advertising. And they spend a lot. For Madden 09, for example, they spent over $US10 million on marketing. For one game. $US5.5 million alone was spent on cable TV advertising. Guess an email just reminding everyone "hey, new Madden is out" can't get the job done.
While it's fairly common these days for console games (Wii excepted) to launch with widescreen/16:9 support, PC games aren't so fortunate. Even in 2008, with widescreen monitors becoming so popular that even the Xbox 360 natively supports many of their resolutions, a ton of PC games 
Attention all professional athletes who use Kotaku as your primary news source: if you want to secure the coveted/cursed Madden NFL coverboy spot, you may have to open up those wallets. EA Sports head honcho Peter Moore says, according to a Bloomberg report, that the company is considering selling off the cover treatment to the highest bidder. Don't PayPal the cash yet — the matter is still under internal discussion.
According to ESPN, the NBA Street series is officially "on hiatus." Yes, we know. The trail of tears forms to the left. The NBA licensed street ball series, once part of the EA Sports BIG label and kind of a big deal, looks to have gone the way of the dinosaur, thanks in part to Wii Sports.
According to a report by market researchers Odyssey, music games have now overtaken sports titles as the second-most played genre/category in video games. While 62% of surveyed gamers said they played sports games in 2005, that figure was down to only 50% in 2008. Which puts them behind the increasingly popular music games - such as Rock Band, SingStar and Guitar Hero - that 58% of surveyed gamers said they'd played. The decline in the sporting market would be troubling for EA if they, you know. Didn't also help put out Rock Band. As for the top-selling category/genre, that's still "action games", which 65% of surveyed gamers had partaken in.
The estate of John Facenda, the "Voice of God" of highlight-reel narration famously misquoted as calling Lambeau Field "frozen tundra," has won yet another appellate victory against NFL Films for its unauthorized use of his voice in a promotional video for Electronic Arts' Madden football franchise. 
The NPD figures for the month aren't out yet. We don't know 'em. Think that'll stop EA Sports boss Peter Moore from calling the results? It won't stop Peter Moore from calling squat. He's disclosed EA's own internal estimates for the game, and since we're on a 
