The last time that EA Sports put out a college football video game, Nick Saban was fresh off his second straight BCS championship and his third national championship in four years with the Crimson Tide. And even the idea of proposing legal Alabama sports betting would have seemed preposterous.
A lot has happened in the last 11 years since College Football 2014 was released on July 9, 2013. Saban hanging up the whistle for good this month after winning six national championships in Tuscaloosa. Former Washington and Fresno State head coach Kalen DeBoer is replacing him at the helm of the Crimson Tide, tasked with keeping archrival Auburn down.
Saban won’t be featured in this year’s game (probably), but we do know that EA Sports will bring back “EA Sports College Football 25” this summer. There have been reports that it will be released in July but that is not confirmed.
With this in mind, BetAlabama.com took a break from covering the effort to make Alabama sportsbook apps available, and we used Google Trends to analyze states that are searching for information about the video game franchise’s rebirth. Our research is based on searches spanning from Dec. 22, 2023, to Jan. 22, 2024. We compared searches to interest in other topics to come up with this list of top 10 states most interested in the impending EA Sports college football video game.
States Most Excited For NCAA Football Video Game
Alabama Very Interested in EA Sports College Football
In addition to playing out the Bama-Auburn rivalry on their console, folks playing the video game can see how far they can take other teams in the state, including Troy, South Alabama, UAB or FBS newcomer Jacksonville State.
Alabama ranked fourth nationally when it came to search interest level scores on Google, with 60 points compared to other topics. That ranked behind West Virginia (100 points), Kansas (74) and Oklahoma (61). The Yellowhammer State finished ahead of Kentucky (56), Nebraska (46) and Mississippi (44). Rounding out the top 10 nationally were Iowa and Tennessee at 40 apiece, while Louisiana was 10th overall at 39, showing a definite SEC geographic twist when it came to interest in the EA Sports console game.
According to Matt Brown of ExtraPoints.com, the game is set to be called EA Sports College Football 25. It is slated to have accurate rosters for each of 134 Football Bowl Subdivision teams for the 2024 season – this is now possible thanks to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules that permit players to be compensated for the use of their likenesses. That issue was the major sticking point behind the game’s decade-long dormant state.
We don’t know how long folks will have to wait for operators that can offer Alabama sports betting promo codes in the state, but they won’t have to wait long to play the next iteration of the famed EA Sports College Football franchise.
