Last year saw one of the biggest re-branding exercises in our industry's history as EA, which over decades had built the FIFA series into a juggernaut that saw off all competition, ended its relationship with football's world governing body. FIFA 23 (released in 2022) was the last in that series and 2023 saw the release of EA Sports FC 24, a name that became unavoidable to anyone who watched football in the latter half of the year: pitch hoardings, sponsorships, ads everywhere.
This is not exactly a story of fairytale indie success but, for all that EA CEO Andrew Wilson bullishly dismissed the FIFA license as "four words on a box", a decision that had the potential to go badly wrong. EA may have eventually decided FIFA didn't bring enough to the deal, but those four letters are inextricable from the world's biggest sport and the publisher had spent decades building customer loyalty to the FIFA videogame brand.
