Why EA Sports Abandoned Cricket (And Why They'll Never Come Back)
TL;DR
EA Sports ran a cricket game series from 1996 to 2007. Cricket 07 was the last one. Since then, nothing. Here is why they stopped and why a return is structurally unlikely.
Table of Contents
EA Sports published cricket games from 1996 to 2007. Eight titles in 11 years. Then Cricket 07 shipped and EA walked away. No announcement, no explanation. For nearly two decades, millions of cricket fans have been waiting for a follow-up that will not come.
The series, in full
EA's cricket catalog covers 3 console generations and roughly 50 million sales across South Asia, England, and Australia.
- Cricket 96 — The original. Basic by any standard, but the first mass-market cricket title on PC.
- Cricket 97 — Also shipped as the Ashes Tour Edition for the UK and Australian market.
- Cricket World Cup 99 — Released to coincide with England hosting the World Cup.
- Cricket 2000 — A meaningful technical jump. First entry to feel like a real sports simulation.
- ICC Cricket 2002 — The one most fans point to. Richie Benaud commentary. Widely regarded as the series peak.
- Cricket 2004 — Released in 2003 due to the ICC schedule.
- Cricket 2005 — Refined gameplay, more animations.
- Cricket 07 — The last entry. Still actively patched by the community as of 2026.
Why EA stopped: the piracy problem
The biggest cricket market in the world was India and Pakistan. It was also EA's worst market by revenue. Piracy rates for physical software in the Indian subcontinent ran at 80 to 90% through the 2000s. Original discs cost the equivalent of a week's salary for a middle-class household. Pirated copies cost ₹30–50 at any electronics market in Mumbai, Karachi, or Lahore.
For every 10 people playing EA Cricket in South Asia, roughly 1 or 2 had paid for it. The audience was there. The paying customers were not.
That math did not work at scale. EA's development and licensing costs were rising with each title. Revenue from the regions where cricket had the deepest cultural hold was not keeping pace.
The BCCI licensing wall
To release a credible cricket game in 2025, a publisher needs the BCCI's blessing. That means access to IPL branding, player likenesses for India's squad, and team logos. The BCCI licenses its IP at rates that reflect its position as the most commercially powerful cricket board in the world.
As of early 2026, no cricket video game has a comprehensive IPL license. Big Ant Studios — the Australian developer that now makes the best cricket games available — has worked around this by signing individual deals with specific franchises. The result is that their titles launch with incomplete rosters and missing team kits. It is a workable compromise for an independent studio. For EA, which publishes fully licensed sports games across every major league in football, basketball, and American football, selling a cricket game with placeholder player names is a brand problem they won't accept.
The market size problem
EA reported net bookings of $7.4 billion in fiscal year 2025. Madden NFL crossed $1 billion in annual net bookings from one market, North America. EA Sports FC has hundreds of millions of players globally.
Cricket's paying console audience is concentrated in England, Australia, and pockets of South Asia where the premium gaming market has developed. That audience is real and passionate, but it is not comparable in size to football or American football. And cricket's structure — smaller squad sizes, fewer international teams, tournament cycles that don't map neatly to annual releases — makes building a recurring Ultimate Team-style revenue model significantly harder.
Why a return is unlikely: the commercial constraints
- No BCCI license available at a cost that makes commercial sense for a AAA cricket title.
- India and Pakistan are smartphone-first gaming markets, not premium console markets at scale.
- Ultimate Team mechanics don't map naturally to cricket's squad structure and tournament format.
- Big Ant Studios has 15+ years of accumulated cricket gaming expertise — a bar EA would need to immediately clear.
- EA's development cost for a fully licensed AAA sports title typically runs nine figures. Cricket's addressable console market cannot guarantee that return.
Where cricket gaming is actually going
The cricket gaming market has shifted to mobile. Real Cricket, WCC3, and similar titles have tens of millions of downloads across South Asia. The ICC published a gaming rights tender in early 2026 covering 2028–2034. Mobile rights go to auction separately from console rights, and the IPL is excluded entirely from both packages.
The realistic scenario for a cricket gaming revival is a mobile-first, free-to-play title monetised through in-app purchases — not the $70 console game that EA Cricket fans remember. The nostalgia is for a product that required conditions that no longer exist.
Cricket 07's modding community is still releasing patches in 2026. That is 20 years of fan work to keep a discontinued game alive. The demand for a serious cricket game is not in question. The commercial conditions for EA to supply it are.
References
- Wikipedia — EA Sports cricket series. Full list of titles, release dates, and platform coverage.
en.wikipedia.org - SportzPower — ICC gaming rights tender 2028–2034, IPL exclusion from ICC package.
sportzpower.com - Electronic Arts — EA annual report, fiscal year 2025. Net bookings $7.4 billion.
ir.ea.com - Sportskeeda — Big Ant Studios cricket licensing, IPL franchise deals.
sportskeeda.com - VICE — Piracy in India, the 2000s grey market, and its impact on game developers.
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