Most of the non-flagship competition was sub-standard

Distribution of Metacritic scores for major console sports games that were not "flagship" franchises during the era of competition between sports series

Sports considered were baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer. A sport was considered to be in its competitive era when there were at least 2 major simulation franchises running concurrently.
Chart: Neil PaineSource: MetacriticGet the dataCreated with Datawrapper