First, EA snatched up exclusive rights to the NFL marks. Now, it has signed a 15-year exclusive deal with ESPN (which starts in 2006, when ESPN's deal with Sega expires).
As the article points out, this makes the ESPN / EA relationship a little less awkward - since Madden and Al Michaels are announcers on ABC, the sister company of ESPN.
The deal definitely makes more sense in light of EA's exclusive NFL rights, but I have to think this spells the end for Sega's line. That's a shame - because although I'm still a bigger fan of the Madden series, the competition (in both pricing and features) helps makes Madden a better game.
I've always thought it would be really neat if they had more than just Madden announcing. It would be a much more immersive experience if you had the “real” announcers for that particular game. (Unfortunately, this might mean more of Joe Theismann and Mike Patrick... not Aikman, Collinsworth and Buck!). This probably also means that the Storyline Central will be driven at least in part by Chris Berman.
So, while the competition is a loss, there could be some really interesting things that come out of this. EA is in fact buying up the world... but that could be a good thing for us gamers! It only sucks that we have to wait until 2006 to play this!