EA Sports: Preparing to Drop Tiger Woods?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- One of Tiger Woods' most loyal sponsors may have begun second-guessing itself.

After Electronic Arts(ERTS) insisted many times that its relationship with Woods hadn't been affected by the scrutiny over his extramarital adventures, the media began to take the constancy of Electronic Arts' support for the golfer for granted.

It seemed that Woods was in the clear with Electronic Arts.

But then on January 13, online gamer's guide Kotaku reported that Electronic Arts had discreetly sponsored a survey about Tiger Woods on Web survey site Greenfield Online.

The survey questions tried to gather the public's views of Electronic Arts' EA Sports division and EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online game, on the heels of the revelations of Woods' extramarital affairs.

The survey begins with general questions about sports games, then surprises survey takers with questions like:

"EA SPORTS makes a Tiger Woods video game. Has the controversy made your impressions of EA SPORTS more or less favorable, or has it had no impact?" and "Has the controversy made you more or less likely to buy a Tiger Woods related video game in the future?"