League launches partnership with EA Sports but still no CFL game

The CFL has announced a partnership with gaming giant EA Sports and says there will be a “number of social mobile CFL-branded games for 2017.”

But a console game? Not any time soon.

The new deal allows players of the popular Madden Mobile video game to participate in “Live Events” that feature some CFL aspects. The launch on Monday included the ability to earn a collectible card, one of several “Items.”  Once a player earns enough CFL “Items” for a “Set” they have the option of trading these in for a CFL Legend that will be added to the gamer’s roster to then use in the game.

Of course, the only way to earn these items is to play the four-down American football using NFL teams.

“This is not ‘the CFL video game,'” said Christina Litz the CFL’s vice president for content and marketing said in a release. “What this is is an innovative marketing initiative to get our brand and players in front of the millions of Madden NFL Mobile players around the world.”

According to Litz, the league is working towards launching CFL-branded mobile games next year. But the league does not appear to be any closer to launching a console game that could played on the XBox or PlayStation.

“At this point, we haven’t yet made a partnership or proposal that we believe can be successful – and we believe strongly that we owe it to our fans as well as our players to get this right,”