NBA Live is cut from the same cloth that Madden is. We are witnessing what would happen to madden if it had competition.
2k is also certainly not catering to just sim. However, 2k has what sim players in Madden have been begging for. Regardless of the target audience, 2K gets results for the sim user and franchise player.
People can make all the excuses or arguments they want, but what it really comes down to is results. And for franchise, we received no results for Madden 18, which has lead a large portion of the OS community concerned for the future of CFM.