If it wasn't a Sony bashing thread, you'd try to be objective and come up with reason both negative AND positive for Sony to turn EA away.

I'll reiterate some reasons, just to balance your one/narrow minded view on this:

I- Firstly it obviously competes with and potentially devalues ps+ (you'd have to think EA games would be less likely to become available to plus, or potentially they could be even more outdated versions of the sports titles).

II- End user support. For the tiny fraction of the fee Sony would receive, they'd be expected to manage the purchase and delivery as with any digital purchase, but the fact that it's not just a single transaction for a single item and rather the support of a yearly or monthly subscription service, opens the door to many more potential issues.
Sony would be the first point of call for end user support when anything went wrong (and with ea/origin on top of ps+, that might not be trivial). Reading the many threads on GAF, I'm sure Sony's CS support lines are busy enough as is regarding the various issues that are thrown up with with their own ps+ without generating more with an extra layer of potential pitfalls on top. There would no doubt be grey areas - problems where Sony think it's an EA issue, EA think it's a Sony issue. Not appetising.

III- It's not just EA - you have to think further ahead. Other publishers are likely to expect to be able to be given the chance to offer a competing (but maybe not even necessarily that similar) service for their own titles. This would not only multiply the effects of the above concerns but, thinking it through a bit more, you'd have to factor in each publisher's competing service's rules, regulations and nuances... and you are now presenting an even more complex problem for Sony CS.

Taking this further, it's not difficult to imagine the potential for a sea of confusion customer-side when Johnny Gamer expects certain things of one service that is actually only a part of a rival service he also subscribes to. This would only compound with every new service added. All customers would go directly to Sony to air their grievances and have their minds set at ease. Those CS staff are going to spend the next few years in and out of training courses like an mcse.

IV- Having to set up an auto-renewal with a credit card held on file. Sony don't really want to go there, do they? And that Johnny Gamer guy - what if he forgets to cancel and the service auto-renews - Sony CS have to deal with enough "my dog bought COD Ghosts when it scratched its arse on my DS4 help me please!" kind of gripes as it is.

The disc is what Sony conceded on.  They knew that consumers and even their own systems weren't prepared to go all DRM all the time.  So, they went with the approrach that they were thinking of the consumer by not forcing DRM.  A great story and as it turns out, a GREAT sales pitch.  Meanwhile, they work slowly to ensure that there is no competition to their service on the dominant selling system.  By default, they have created DRM.  If 2/3 of the market is on your system and must go through your system only to get the content, then they have most of the control and the gamers and publishers have none or very little.

It was just a brilliant play on people emotions to have physical media.

This isn't a bashing on Sony, but rather a compliment.

I too had fallen for some of the “Sony wants to cater to the gamer more” theories.  After E3 last year, it seems that they had really managed to show Microsoft that the gaming community was not interested in DRM or Digital Only ownership (or Kinect in the box it seems).  The gaming community rejoiced that Sony had saved them from the evils that Microsoft had intended.

 I myself was more in the middle.  I liked some aspects of it and also hated others.  But, I did recognize that it was more of an obvious direction of the future than anything else.  If you have any investment in the Apple ecosystem, Microsoft’s plan was a big step up from that.

As we all know, a little over a year later, we sit here today and the consumers have spoken with their wallets.  The PS4 is clearly their system of choice and Microsoft has 180’d themselves to the point that their eyes can’t stop spinning in their head.

This is where when we have finally learned that we have all been duped.

When Sony turned down the EA Access package, I could have just assumed that they simply didn’t like the cost model EA had proposed or some other business reason.  But when Sony announced that they had decided for all of us that it was a bad deal and that they did it to protect us, I knew something was wrong. One thing to remember is that gamers don’t have to pay for the EA program to play EA games, it is an option of theirs if they want it.

Sony allows Netflix and other such services, why not a gaming related one on a gaming system?

The reason is too obvious of course.  They didn’t want publisher DRM, because they wanted their own Sony DRM instead.  They want complete control of the pie.  Sony wants to decide who gets paid and how much.  Based on the future of PS Now, they will control the whole pie.  If a publisher doesn’t want to go through Sony’s store and pay what Sony wants, then go to retail and pay what they want and all of the costs of distribution.  Had Sony accepted the EA program, they would have gotten only a small fraction of the $2.50 per month that EA was collecting.  Also, they would have had EA selling their digital product direct to the consumer and further reducing their cut/control.  Sony also knew that soon enough, almost all of the publishers of any size would have their own “store within a store”.  All control over the bigger publishers would be lost.  Microsoft wanted the same thing, but they were dumb enough to tell us up front.

I am very proud of the fact that Sony has pulled of one of the most amazing marketing tricks.  They managed to convince almost all of the gamers and most of the media that they were not implementing DRM because they wanted to protect the gamers.  They rode that wave to a huge lead in introducing a new console.  Meanwhile, they are working real hard to ensure that now that they have a market advantage in console sales, they will have complete control of the inevitable digital future. 

Don’t blame Sony, they just copied Apples business model.  Apple said all of the same things 10 years ago when they were convincing us to go all digital with our music.  I just can’t believe we all fell for it AGAIN!

Source = ME