Every year since Shohei Ohtani stormed onto the big-league scene, I’ve played as Hot Cheese, a two-way player that I created in MLB: The Show’s career mode. He’s always a knuckleballer, and most seasons, he’s also a catcher. I also gave him graying hair, a handlebar mustache (we love Rollie Fingers in the Wilson household) and the beefiest build I can create. I admit I’m behind this year on playing The Show and Hot Cheese won’t make his MLB debut until Sunday.
But I also face a big question for 2025. Hot Cheese has always played for the A’s, but will he continue to play for the team this season after my beloved real-life club bailed on Oakland? It makes me shudder thinking of taking him over to the Giants.
Consumer spending on gaming software and services will generate $85.2 billion this year -- whether it be from games, accessories, consoles, in-game transactions or otherwise -- and that figure is up from $80.2 billion last year, per data from Newzoo’s annual PC & Console Gaming Report.
Let’s dive into the insights.
Sports games: A power to reckon with
Sports video games are the largest genre on consoles, outpacing shooters, battle royale, role-playing and adventure games. Its share on PC is growing, but “it’s still relatively small compared to console,” Newzoo Principal Games Market Analyst Michiel Buijsman said.
When it comes to in-game transactions, I like to think about Mel Brooks’ line from “Spaceballs” about merchandising, where he describes it as “where the real money from the movie is made.” In gaming, most in-game transaction spending is coming from sports games and popular titles like Call of Duty, Fortnite and Roblox. “There’s a very solid base of that microtransaction from sports games,” said Buijsman. He also notes that while a game like EA Sports FC 25 underperformed, NBA 2K25 did very well. “Those two offset each other.”
Newzoo fewer games
What sports games mean to PS5
Newzoo said playtime on Sony’s PS5 grew 23% (and it grew 6% across all platforms), but this isn’t because of sports games. Most of this comes from Fortnite, Lego’s Fortnite mode and Roblox, which launched on the console in late 2023, and the standard Call of Duty bump in the fall. But while growth isn’t coming from sports games, Buijsman said “they take up a sizable amount of playtime” and “still, it’s one of the most, it’s the largest genre by revenue.” But what this shows is the power of Call of Duty, Fortnite and Roblox, and especially why so many sports leagues are getting on the latter two’s platforms.
But why are sports such a draw on PlayStation? Sony’s platform has long had a larger audience in Europe than Xbox, and many other regions outside the U.S. prefer the PlayStation as well (Xbox has a small audience Japan). Buijsman: “You can see that, especially for PlayStation, there’s a big soccer-loving audience that also games and therefore attracting all that playtime into EA FC as well. But this has grown over time simply because it has a good platform fit. There’s a big overlap between the audience that plays games and likes sports, because it’s sort of grounded in the interest in real life sports. While there is an audience that might play NBA 2K and doesn’t watch basketball, it’s easier to have if both are present.”
Back to school -- in a big way
EA Sports College Football 25 accounted for 4% of the growth in playtime of new releases in 2024 (which was 15% of all playtime on PlayStation and Xbox). It’s an impressive number when you consider the thousands of new releases across all platforms. “That’s pretty good,” Buijsman said.
It’s the classic example of pent-up demand combined with a well-received product. “It’s one of those games that hasn’t been published for a long time. A lot of players might be re-engaged here with the title up from the previous editions ... as well as some new players,” noted Buijsman.
Newzoo playtime chart
The strength of annual sports games
New releases accounted for 15% of all playtime on PlayStation and Xbox. For Microsoft’s console, three of the top-five games of 2024 in terms of playtime were sports games: EA College Football 25, NBA 2K25 and EA Sports FC 25. Basically, 3.7% of last year’s playtime on Xbox was on those three games, Buijsman noted.
Of the top five new releases on PS5, three were sports games: EA Sports FC 25, NBA 2K25 and EA College Football 25, at 4.3% of playtime. It also shows which consoles and sports are more dominant in certain regions.
“The interesting thing to note here is that if you look at EA FC, it’s the second title on PlayStation where it is No. 4 on Xbox,” Buijsman said. “What you can see here is the skew toward an American audience, because the second largest new game in the U.S. was college football, then NBA 2K and then EA FC. And then if you look at PlayStation, which is much more prevalent in the rest of the world, especially Europe, you can see that EA Sports FC has two-and-a half times as many hours, for example, compared to NBA 2K.”
Building on ‘recursive nostalgia’
One of the cornerstone trends of this Newzoo report is “recursive nostalgia.” Buijsman described that as when “games are using their own stories, histories and gameplay elements as a means to re-engage players.” It’s all about triggering that nostalgia of playing previous versions or events in a game. And this applies to sports games, with legacy athletes and legends modes where you can play with Michael Jordan or Ronaldinho. “They’re great to have in your team, of course, as well as triggering that nostalgia feeling,” Buijsman said.
When it comes to bringing back old events, he noted how NBA 2K25 could bring back the Jordan Challenge from NBA 2K11 to reengage players that never played it -- or want to give it another go with the modern version of the games. Recursive nostalgia can also be as simple as bringing back music from past editions. Or being innovative, as Sony has been with its Storylines mode in recent MLB: The Show games that shine a light on the significance of the Negro Leagues and its players.
How much do Fortnite and Roblox cannibalize sports games?
Game publishers everywhere are worried about the effects that the major free-to-play games are having on the market, especially Fortnite and Roblox, which can carve into the audiences for other games. But sports are more sheltered from these hungry heavyweights, even if there is some overlap.
Buijsman: “If we look on console, most of the spending of players is on premium content, which includes EA FC and NBA 2K, and there’s a very big player base that just plays one or two of those sports titles. There’s a very, very solid base of players that won’t move anywhere else. They will likely buy it the year after again and keep spending. ... So, they’re relatively sheltered, I would say they’re more sheltered when compared to shooters or other free to play games on console.”
Fortnite and Roblox are also not as cannibalistic to sports games because, while they do offer some sports-like experiences, they aren’t true sports games. Folks who prefer buying and playing the annual sports games don’t dive into Fortnite or Roblox.
Lack of homegrown teams hurts Latin American market
Another reason EA Sports FC has not performed as well as it did in its FIFA years is because of licensing deals. While La Liga has a presence in EA Sports FC, other leagues and clubs in Mexico and Latin America do not.
“We did an analysis a while back where we saw now for the second year in a row, the Mexican Latin American teams are not present in EA FC because of licensing that is going on. And we did see sort of a stronger drop in those markets with engagement going down,” Buijsman said. “If you’re in Mexico and or in Brazil, and your team is not represented in a game, you definitely lose sort of interest in it. So really, the connection between real life sports and playing one of the sports games is definitely there.”
The major takeaway for sports leagues for gaming in 2025
Buijsman says when it comes to sports, “it’s sort of boring.” Now, this isn’t a bad thing, as the big established games continue to hold strong (or even build audience) and old brands such as College Football can not only return to but also storm back stronger than ever before. “They’re not going away,” Buijsman said. But he does note that the makers of soccer games -- EA Sports and Konami (eFootball, the former Pro Evolution series) -- could face the threat of an aging audience for soccer in the future.
But as long as pro sports remain popular with audiences around the world, sports games should do well. “If they stay popular, then of course I see it’s better for the games as well. Like I said, sometimes FIFA does worse, and then we have a World Cup or a European championship again, then they’re doing a bit better. So [a game might be] hovering up and down, and then it’s growing. And then there’s some innovation every year for these titles, but I don’t think we will see any big innovation within the titles, how they monetize and how they’re being played, [anytime soon].”
It’ll be interesting to see if NASCAR 25 can follow College Football’s example in pulling off a rebirth.
One disclaimer on the projections from Buijsman: Newzoo’s projections do not factor in President Trump’s recent tariff regimes, which are creating uncertainity in every market across the globe.
“[Trump’s tariffs are] so new. We are keeping an eye on them and figuring out what to do and what effect they will have. But right now, these numbers that we just published do not take into account any of the recently announced tariffs,” he said.
2K Sports and The Play Company (an online tournament platform) launched Play NBA 2K today. It’s a tournament service inside The Play Company’s platform, with weekly events (both free-to-enter and fee-based).
The Esports World Cup finalized its lineup for its 2025 series, which runs July 7-Aug. 24 in Saudi Arabia. It’ll feature 25 tournaments in 24 games, with 2,000 players and 200 clubs chasing a prize pool of over $70 million.
Blast is working with Underdog (a sports betting company in the U.S.) as an official sponsor for three events in 2025: the Premier Lisbon Open, Premier Monterrey Rivals and the Austin Major. Underdog will receive broadcast segments as part of the deal, along with its brand being featured in both physical and digital assets and the Blast.tv fantasy minigame.
USC’s Galen Center will host the Fortnite Championship Series Pro-Am, a new event featuring 40 pros, streamers and other content creators put into 20 two-player teams competing for a $500,000 prize pool, on May 10.
Big Ant Studios and the Australian Football League will release AFL 26 on May 7 on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. It’s the lone Australian rules football game series I’m aware of!
Esports organization NRG is working with Theta Labs to launch Volt, an AI-powered chatbot built on Theta EdgeCloud and the L1 blockchain, for fan engagement.
Lowe’s will appear in EA Sports games for the first time, promoting its brand and MyLowe’s Rewards program.
