Big news on the sports front today with AT&T dropping their endorsement of Tiger Woods; this makes At&T the second large company to pull away from the embattled golf star after Accenture dumped him a few weeks back (Gillette is "limiting coverage" still.) While gamers are a forgiving bunch because it's about the game, not the personality of the person it's based on - parents that buy games for kids aren't so understanding. This is the problem EA is running into.

It's a complicated relationship with Tiger because it's not only the biggest golf franchise, EA has also invested a lot of money in PR and development costs around the golfer.



EA is currently sitting on Tiger Online after having delayed the game earlier in the year (for other reasons not related to Tiger's active sex life.) At this point the game is in an active beta but will it ever see a full release? In my opinion, not unless EA really has no other choice. How hard would it be to reskin another golf star into the game? But it's not just that, there's the marketing dollars already spent and contracts that would have to be looked at again. In other words, this is messy business and EA would have to eat the loss. I can only think that there is no morals clause in their Tiger contract or they would have dumped him by now.

There's also something else complicating EA's decision on the Tiger topic - his race. Sure, Tiger will joke to his lovers that he's Blasian but the world by-and-large sees him as African-American. If EA was to dump Tiger there will surely be calls of racism, especially if they go on to promote another golfer that happens to be white.

This is a minefield for the software publisher and one that is likely not to turn out well for EA, it's shareholders or Tiger. It will be a painful decision but in the end, EA will have to sever their relationship with Tiger or face the wrath of angry mothers at the retail store. Can you say Phil Mickelson PGA Tour 11?

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