While it can be glossed over on occasion, presentation in sports games is an incredibly important aspect to capturing that game day feel we all crave. Sure, it might appear like mere window dressing, but sports fans take this kind of TV presentation seriously! Which is why it’s always important for games like Madden to capture these kinds of visual signatures, especially in a video game centered around America’s most popular sport.
To anyone paying attention to the Madden 26 gameplay deep dive, you might’ve noticed that EA Sports has revamped its presentation to better reflect what fans are used to seeing throughout the week. And the scorebugs were the biggest giveaway!
Madden 26 Has At Least Three New Scorebugs
To those who aren’t aware of what a scorebug is, it is essentially the visual scoreboard that can be seen during sports broadcasts on TV. Each scorebug is individual to a certain network. For instance, the scorebug you’ll see at the bottom of NFL broadcasts on FOX isn’t the same as the one you’ll see on CBS. While none of these networks are licensed in Madden 26, the game does have different scorebugs to reflect different kinds of games.
In total, three new scorebugs can be seen in the trailer, though only one is super visible — the one used for the Thursday night primetime game. Outside of that, Shestytown on X discovered other frames in the trailer that showed two other scorebugs.
Here are the three we’ve spotted so far:
- Thursday Night Primetime (TNP) – Thursday night primetime games, based on Thursday Night Football broadcasts which are currently carried by Amazon Prime
- Monday Night Primetime (MNP) – Monday night primetime games, based on Monday Night Football broadcasts which are currently carried by ESPN
- Standard Madden scorebug – Seems to be based on typical Sunday afternoon broadcasts.
A notable omission seems to be that of a Sunday night broadcast. But given that it’s such a big aspect of an NFL season, one could conclude that it’s definitely in there somewhere. But for now, these are the three we’ve been allowed to see.
Obviously, Thursday and Monday night games in the NFL are nationally broadcast and typically the most viewed games of any week in the regular season. So, having these kinds of unique presentations is important for immersion’s sake. Let’s just hope they don’t neglect the basic Sunday broadcasts, or omit Sunday Night Football!
