A nearly 30-year relationship is coming to an end. FIFA and EA Sports, the two forces behind the popular series of FIFA football video games, have failed to reach a new long-term licensing deal. Instead, they have agreed to a one-year extension through 2023 – for the release of the game’s final edition, FIFA 23 – and will thereafter part ways. The extension covers simulation football only, so FIFA is free to deal with other game developers for other kinds of gaming.
In consequence, EA Sports will be changing its company name in 2023 to EA Sports FC. It says that it will retain its licensing portfolio of “more than 19,000+ players, 700+ teams, 100+ stadiums and 30 leagues,” among them the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and the MLS. It will also be maintaining such game features as Ultimate Team, Career Mode, Pro Clubs and VOLTA Football.
EA Sports is framing the change as a “fresh opportunity” to “innovate, create and evolve.” FIFA, for its part, has said in a statement that it is “bullish” about its future in gaming and that football games “must involve more than one party controlling and exploiting all rights.”
In a separate statement, football’s international governing body (a non-profit organization), said that it was already producing, with other third parties, several non-simulation games for launch in this year’s third quarter. The earliest of these will be based around this year’s World Cup, in Qatar, and next year’s Women’s World Cup, in Australia and New Zealand. The Women’s World Cup, incidentally, will be making its video game debut in FIFA 23. According to FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, the FIFA series of games will continue from number 24.
FIFA’s new approach to gaming will have some connection to FIFA+, its new direct-to-consumer media platform.
According to ESPN, the licensing rights for the FIFA game franchise generate $150 million per year for FIFA and represent the “single biggest commercial earner” in the $7 billion the body projects to generate in revenues for 2019-2022.
Video games are complicated to evaluate in terms of sales. On the one hand, there are individual games; on the other, franchises. According to gameindustry.biz, the most popular edition of the football game was FIFA 18, released in 2017 and selling some 24 million copies. The current release is FIFA 22.
The EA Sports FC franchise, which includes the FIFA games, has sold 325 million copies overall. This puts it just ahead of Minecraft (238m) and just behind Grand Theft Auto (370m). The top franchise in history is Mario (777m).
