EA Sports is a brand name used by Electronic Arts since 1993 to distribute games based on sports. Formerly a gimmick inside Electronic Arts sports games, that tried to mimic real-life sports networks, calling themselves "EA Sports Network" (EASN) with pictures or endorsements of real commentators such as John Madden, it soon grew up to become a sub-label on its own, releasing game series such as NBA Live, FIFA, NHL, Madden NFL, and NASCAR. Most games under this brand are developed by EA Canada, the studio of Electronic Arts in Burnaby, British Columbia, as well as at EA Tiburon in Maitland, Florida.

EA Sports' early motto, If it's in the game, it's in the game, (later abbreviated to just It's in the game.) reflects the aim of the early games to portray reality as best as the technology would allow. Unlike some other companies, EA Sports has no special ties to a single platform, which means that all games are released for the best-selling active platforms, sometimes long after most other companies abandon them. For example, FIFA 98, Madden NFL 98, NBA Live 98, and NHL 98 were released for the Sega Genesis and the Super NES throughout 1997; Madden NFL 2005 and FIFA 2005 had PlayStation releases in 2004 (FIFA 2005 was also the last PlayStation title to be released); and NCAA Football 08 had an Xbox release in 2007. Madden NFL 08 also had Xbox and GameCube releases in 2007, and was the final title released for the GameCube, with Madden NFL 09 following as the final Xbox title. Additionally, NASCAR Thunder 2003 and NASCAR Thunder 2004 were released not only for the PlayStation 2, but for the original PlayStation as well.

16 bit era

After establishing with some highly regarded titles from 1987-1992, most notably Earl Weaver Baseball in 1987, John Madden Football in 1990 and NHL Hockey in 1991, EA decided in 1992 to launch a sports-only label and EASN was born. ESPN took note of the similarities, and forced EA to come up with a new label to put their sports label under for the 1994 season. The first run of the 1994 season still donned the EASN brand, with a 'first run' logo on the lower right hand corner of the box (this was also done in 1993), while the rest of the production run was under the name EA Sports, with a new logo (whose design later would be also adopted by EA) and a uniform box design, all white with a live-action photo (example), the exception being the Madden games, which featured Madden himself. This logo was designed by Michael Osborne (now Michael Osborne Designs) with assistance from Don Transeth and Jeff Odiorne. All boxes would remain this way until 1997, when individual players starred alone, and although the 1999 titles featured a dark blue case, the all-white boxes returned the next year with John Madden on the cover.