When Is It the Best Time to Release a Sports Game?

A lot of things make sports games unique in the video game world, but chief among them is that so many sports games succeed on the backs of real sports leagues. This means they have unique relationships with these real sports in multiple ways, one of which is how video games play into the hype for the next NFL, college, NBA, MLB, NHL season.

It seems like a good time to talk about this relationship considering Madden 26 hits early access next week (yes, that’s real) and kicks off a spree of major sports game releases that hit in August and September. It’s perhaps even the best time to talk about this relationship because we remain in this “doldrums” part of the sports schedule where MLB is the only active major US sports league.

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The NFL would tell you the league never sleeps, and it is the league that does the best job trying to keep something “major” on the schedule all year long, but as a kid, Madden’s release was when I’d start to get excited about the next NFL season. And this sort of semi-related thing acting as a trigger for fandom is perfectly normal. For some others, it is seeing those first preview magazines on newsstands.

For college football, it was the OS countdown threads for NCAA Football that activated my excitement for that sport as a kid, and in the years where we had “where to hunt for the game” threads only helped to drive home the building excitement. In retrospect, it’s hilarious to me how much joy I got reading about things like how “NCAA Football just fell out the back of this truck and I got a copy,” or how “XYZ mom and pop store is selling NCAA Football early.” That sort of info would inevitably lead to me explaining to my mom why we had to drive 200 miles to go and see for ourselves (before my mom would politely tell me the many reasons why that would not be happening — she never ever went for the idea for some odd reason). That mystique is mostly gone at this point as early access and digital copies are a mainstay now, but there is no question this sort of stuff can still get you juiced up for a real sport returning to our lives.

And because sports games can play so much into our real fandom, I do think there is a sweet spot for a sports game’s release. It depends a bit on the sport, but I think some basic rules are enough to explain when a sports game should come out each year.

1) Games Should Come Out No Sooner Than The Start Of Preseason

I do think some people love when sports games are out way early. There was a year or two where The Show came out in like late February, but I’m here to put my foot down and say no to that nonsense. MLB spring training is long enough, and if I’m already playing The Show right as spring training starts, we got problems.

Madden 26 hits early access on Thursday August 7, and that is also the same day NFL preseason play begins (excluding the HOF game). Perhaps because I got so used to August 13 to late August being the more “normal” release this feels a hair early to me, but I think it’s in the right ballpark (plus it’s early access not the true release date).

The game that has been messing this up as of late is NBA 2K. NBA 2K26 early access starts on August 29 this year — that’s just wrong. We don’t even get a preseason game until early October. NBA 2K used to release in late September, then went to October, then went back to late September, and now it’s gone to early September. I understand all sports leagues are moving up their dates and adding some extra games here and there, but there is a limit to this tomfoolery. You absolutely cannot be starting the video game season before real training camp begins — heck there might even be a restricted free agent or two who still hasn’t signed with a team by the time 2K26 comes out.

Of course, even on OS some us play sports games even if we don’t really follow them in real life, but it’s more about what the video game release means. Even if you don’t follow the real sport, you can’t be playing a game for a full month before any game of consequence hits because I think there’s also something to the lifespan of these games. In theory, a good sports game shouldn’t begin to hit the backburner after just one month, but even some games I’ve really liked have started to wane in importance to me after a single month. One goal of these sports games is to try and convert us to being fans of the real sport. If you’re already getting bored of the sports game before the real season begins, there is way less of a chance you’ll scope out the real sport anymore. These games need to scratch that real sport itch at the right time to get us intrigued enough to go watch an NHL/NBA/NFL game.

Give A Little More Cushion If We Need Rosters

Look, this is absolutely sicko/OS adjacent, but this is true even if we remove the custom rosters component. MLB The Show and CFB need a little more runway. Even if we can’t edit rosters anymore in CFB, EA now needs time to get more of these freshmen created and ready for when college football season truly begins. As an aside, it does feel like the first “major” roster update is now going to be a big event in every CFB game until EA potentially allows the true sickos to get back to doing what they do and creating custom rosters.

And back in the day, yeah we needed 1-3 weeks for fans to make rosters in NCAA, and then we needed a week or two to ship our memory cards if we didn’t have ways to download them ourselves to our shitty ass USB devices. With MLB The Show, it was nearly as important because you had to wait for not just the MLB rosters to settle, but then you needed to see where everyone would be assigned in the minors. If the game came out too early, it meant everyone was just in a holding pattern of sorts — even if they could still do plenty of prep work.

Other sports with smaller rosters and less moving parts need less time, and I think those are the sports you can run up closer to the start of the regular season before releasing.

We Need Just Enough Time To Test Things Before The Real Season Begins

Again, this depends a bit on the game, but why we need a little runway before the season starts also ties into things like sliders, figuring out franchise mode, and giving real teams enough time to set their own final rosters. If the sports games were to come out day and date with the start of the regular season, the crunch for many of us would be a bit awkward.

I think an underrated component of sports games is that they help us learn where everyone ended up. I know plenty of people who don’t realize certain players have even moved teams until they boot up and play a sports game for that season. Sports games help us with fantasy drafts, knowing the real sport, and learning about all the new rookies who are entering the league.

We also should factor in some time for sliders and testing on modes. I’m just this week finishing up an in-depth recruiting guide for CFB and the game has been out since July 7. Folks on OS still don’t have the best handle on Wear & Tear sliders in CFB, and sliders overall remain a moving target because we also need to factor in early season patches and things of that nature. I like having some runway to do all this sort of stuff because once the real seasons begin, I like to have a franchise playthrough started that I’m going to stick with for a long period of time.

Sports Games Should Never Come Out After The Regular Season Starts

With something like soccer, golf, or some of the racing orgs this is maybe a little trickier to define, but it’s fair to say that if the “real” games that count have started and the video game isn’t out yet, that is a problem.

The most obvious example of how this is an issue goes back to my favorite game to chide in this particular newsletter, which is NBA 2K. The WNBA is also a part of NBA 2K, but the problem is the WNBA season is nearly over by the time NBA 2K comes out. The WNBA season starts in May and the regular season wraps by mid-September. No sports league gets screwed over worse in the video game space than the WNBA.

This was never more obviously a problem than when an all-time rookie class featuring Caitlin Clark wasn’t even playable until NBA 2K25. Those rookies had essentially played a full season before you got to use them for real (albeit modders did great work filling in until then). In effect, you had to wait until 2K25 to play the 2K24 roster. Now, NBA 2K could make this not as intolerable if they at least did a rookie roster update for the prior game, but they don’t do that (probably for licensing reasons), and so the WNBA game always feels super out of date. I’ll always mention that the WNBA gameplay is very good in NBA 2K and continues to be perhaps the best part of the simulation side of gameplay in that series, which makes it all the more frustrating.

On the bright side, most other sports games do avoid this problem. Most of them come out a little too early, not too late.

Bottom Line

To all the sports game companies out there, do the right thing and start releasing sports games at the right time. Oh, and if you think I forgot any principles that should also be part of this new rulebook I just made up, then hit me up.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase