Madden 13 and EA SPORTS Make Season Ticket Somewhat Valuable with Free Content

When EA SPORTS debuted its Season Ticket initiative last fall, there was main question that, when answered, would lead to a string of smaller, follow up questions. The 800-pound gorilla was "What are users getting for the $25 subscription?" Last year, it was temporary, early access to full version of Madden NFL 12, NHL 12, FIFA 12, Tiger Woods 13 and NCAA Football 13, a 20% discount on some downloadable content and a "sucker badge" that would tell all of your Xbox Live and PSN buddies that you fell for that *ish.

Now, beginning with Madden NFL 13, gamers are actually getting something for free, straight off the top when they renew their $25 subscriptions. One legendary and 24 pro card packs for Madden Ultimate Team will get things started later this month for Madden 13, followed by Ultimate Team card packs for NHL 13 and FIFA 13. There will be free stuff for Tiger Woods 14 and NCAA Football 14 as well but that content is still to be announced. It's very likely, EA SPORTS wants to see how you respond to this first tweak to the Season Ticket program before deciding how "valuable" the service is going forward.

Everything else about the program is staying the same including the 3-day "bait-and-switch" trial of EA SPORTS games and the 20% discount on premium DLC. The idea here must be that you get hooked with the free Ultimate Team Card packs --which will surely be full of frustratingly bad cards-- and then you'll feel compelled to then spend your own money once you're 24 packs into it. Remember a company like EA SPORTS has no problem amortizing their deals with the consumer in ways that will always be to their advantage. Hell if you re-up on Season Ticket they just pulled $50 out of you in the last two years without doing any extra work beyond building a new restrictive pay wall into their games here and there. The whole digital delivery/retrieval that comes with the 3-day trial is still a questionable element to the whole thing. Why spend that bandwidth to send a full game (thus proving your digital delivery capabilities) just to take it away again if you ultimately want the guy/girl to start from scratch in their efforts to pay full price at a brick and mortar or online store? The free card packs don't do anything to answer that question.