IMO SEGA basically traded Visual Concepts for Creative Assembly and Sports Interactive. Was it a good move? Yes, considering that Football Manager's development budget is rather low and the returns are high. Football Manager 2014 is always one of the most played steam games right up there with Valve's DOTA 2.
http://www.steamcharts.com/So yeah, Football Manager has a more active online fanbase to NBA 2K games.
Not to mention how much of a success Creative Assembly has been for SEGA, so much so that they have expanded the studio and now has over 300 employees. Total War is a big license and their slowly moving more into the console side of things with Viking (which I liked) and now Aliens Isolation.
The issue was also that not only did EA take the license for the NFL, but Take-Two had the exclusive third-party license for MLB. SEGA would have been only really had NHL and MLB. Take-Two did get a steal IMO for 24 million dollars.
But you have to see the fact that:
- ESPN license was bought by EA for 15 years.
- EA bought the NFL license.
- Take-Two had the MLB license.
I can see why their value was lower. If anything, SEGA should have sold Creative Assembly for like 50 million, right before they partnered up with Take-Two to publish NFL 2K5 which is considered one of the best football games ever.