For many, the Xbox or PlayStation sat under their TVs is predominantly used for one game: FIFA. For 30 years, the game has been the dominant football game, seeing off plenty of rivals over its three decades at the top.
And yet this year, there won’t be a new FIFA game. Or, if there is, it won’t be made by EA Sports, which is going its own way with EA Sports FC.
Why is one of the most familiar brands on the planet starting afresh with something new and untested? The answer seems to come down to one thing: money.
Why is FIFA becoming EA Sports FC?
While FIFA is probably better known as the video game series than football’s governing body, it’s still EA licensing the brand for its product, and that costs money — a fee that has ballooned over 30 years of annual games.
Back in 1993, EA got the branding for peanuts, by its own admittance. “We literally licensed four capital letters and we paid a very, very low royalty percentage rate,” EA’s vice president of marketing, Tom Stone, told The Guardian in 2016. “They were a bunch of old men who had no idea what they had.”
Suffice it to say, they do now. In the most recent negotiations, The New York Times reports, FIFA was seeking “more than double” its current cut, with a fee that would “increase its payout from the series to more than $1 billion for each four-year World Cup cycle”.
EA apparently weighed up how valuable the brand was versus the cost of renewing the deal, and decided it could take the hit of starting afresh with a new name.
EA has wasted no time advertising the new logo, with in-game messages to current FIFA players flagging the change, and advertising boards across Premier League grounds. That’s significant, given EA’s substantial real-life branding is part of what makes its simulations feel so real.
Will EA Sports FC be different to FIFA?
EA Sports says that all the features you know and love will continue with EA Sports FC.
“Everything you love about our games will be part of EA SPORTS FC — the same great experiences, modes, leagues, tournaments, clubs and athletes will be there,” wrote Cam Weber of EA Sports in a news post on the official site. “Ultimate Team, Career Mode, Pro Club,s and VOLTA Football will all be there.”
But there are hints that the move away from FIFA will allow more, too. “This new independent platform will bring fresh opportunity — to innovate, create and evolve,” Weber writes.
What that could be is anyone’s guess — maybe we’ll even see the ‘dive button’ making a return without the game’s governing body looking on disapprovingly.
Will EA Sports FC get the same clubs and players?
One of the key advantages the FIFA games have historically enjoyed over Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series is the fully licensed kits, logos, names, and likenesses.
Suffice it to say, EA has wasted no time in ensuring that this won’t be a return to the bad old days of seeing Ryan Goggs playing for Manchester United. It has already snapped up the Premier League rights for $588 million, and there’s more to come, EA says.
“Our unique licensing portfolio of more than 19,000+ players, 700+ teams, 100+ stadiums and 30 leagues that we’ve continued to invest in for decades will still be there, uniquely in EA Sports FC,” Weber wrote. “That includes exclusive partnerships with the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, the MLS — and more to come.”
Will there be another FIFA game?
From EA, almost certainly not — unless the move to EA Sports FC is so disastrous that it has to return to the sport’s governing body with its tail between its legs.
The FIFA licence is now available to anybody prepared to stump up the fee on a non-exclusive basis, however, and FIFA says it is “currently engaging with leading game publishers, media companies and investors in regard to the development of a major new FIFA simulation football game title for 2024”.
Suffice it to say this is no small undertaking, given FIFA is the product of decades’ worth of year-on-year development from a consistently well-funded team. It’s hard to overestimate the time, cost, and know-how required to make a competitive, mass-market sports video game in 2023, and few developers have it.
FIFA itself has been bullish about the value of its branding, however. “I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans,” said FIFA president Gianni Infantino last May when EA’s break with the body was confirmed.
“The FIFA name is the only global, original title. FIFA 23, FIFA 24, FIFA 25 and FIFA 26, and so on — the constant is the FIFA name and it will remain forever and remain THE BEST.”
Will EA Sports FC prove as popular without the brand name?
While there’s not too much precedent for a brand having to give up a well-known name and start afresh, EA can take comfort from another sports game: Football Manager.
In 2003, Sports Interactive split with Eidos, the publisher of its popular Championship Manager series. Because Eidos owned the rights to the brand name, it made its own Championship Manager games for several years, but struggled to keep up with Sports Interactive’s new brand: Football Manager, which retained much the same gameplay and addictiveness of its predecessors.
Championship Manager as a series ended with the 2011 edition. Football Manager, meanwhile, has seen a new version published every year and still has a loyal and devoted fanbase across PC, Mac, mobile, and console.
If EA can repeat the trick with EA Sports FC, it may wish it had made the break from FIFA years ago.
