How EA Sports Will Stay in the Game Despite End of FIFA Deal

In FIFA 22's first six days after launching in September, 9.1 million players joined a match and 460 million games were played. The video game, which is revised and re-released annually, is one of the most popular on the market—and soon, it will undergo a major change. Though the game will look the same, its name will be different as one of gaming's longest-running alliances comes to an end. Publisher EA Sports and FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, had maintained a nearly three-decade licensing relationship since 1993, but the brands decided to part ways in May after being unable to agree on the terms of an extension. After this year's edition of the game debuts next month as FIFA 23, the game's title will change to EA Sports FC starting in 2023. The name change will require some additional marketing, as fans generally know the game's title but not necessarily the publisher. At the center of the ended partnership is FIFA's pursuit of at least double the $150 million it was earning annually in the deal with EA Sports. To Go Global, This Boston Software Firm Turned to Soccer Also, the international governing body wanted to pursue other opportunities in non-simulation gaming, and is set to release titles this year and in 2023 ahead of both the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023. FIFA is also in talks with leading game publishers, media companies and investors on a major new simulation title for 2024. Another issue was exclusivity, which ended up being a point of contention for both companies. FIFA wanted to pursue other gaming opportunities, while EA was limited in what partners it could include in the game while paying a hefty licensing fee. "The bigger issue for EA, and certainly when I was president of EA Sports, was you always look at the license in terms of what you're paying, what the value is and what you're getting out of it," said Peter Moore, former head of EA Sports and current svp and general manager of software developer Unity. "Does it drive sales, does it drive authenticity?" As EA Sports embarks on the new journey, it has several advantages that should allow its brand to prosper despite having to catch fans up to its new name and branding. Getting intellectual In Moore's view, the split provides a major branding opportunity for EA. The gaming platform can now imprint its brand stamp more firmly in the minds of players and fans. "Ultimately, if the game is called FIFA, it's certainly not your intellectual property," he told Adweek. "When we were building the game when I was there, and then more recently after that as a COO at EA, we were always looking at ways to drive incremental revenue. To invest back in these very expensive licenses, hundreds of millions of dollars outside of FIFA in license fees, it was always difficult." The change also eliminates a money-making obstacle EA had been wrestling with when it was directly tied to FIFA. Moore pointed to the difficulty in driving incremental revenue streams to EA's huge audience. The reason was that FIFA would place restrictions on official marketing partners, which are gone now. EA Sports has already given a peek at what partnerships post-FIFA will look like. The company signed a multi-year deal with the Spanish men's league La Liga and agreed to a sponsorship deal with Sky Sports for its Premier League soccer coverage last week. As a practical matter for gamers, not much will change beyond the new title. EA has 300-plus licenses and access to more than 19,000 players through various licensing agreements with different soccer leagues. The FIFA World Cup and other FIFA-controlled events will no longer be included due to the end of the partnership. "EA would not have made the move if they did not feel that they were very well-positioned in going in a different direction," said Greg Kahn, CEO of GK Digital Ventures and the Emerging Tech Exchange (ETX). "As a publicly traded company that has performed very well, I think it's certainly a strategic move. "They went through all the modeling and realized that they were extremely well positioned in making this change, and had enough commercial partners that expressed interest and, frankly, they had done enough looks from the consumer to realize that they're hardcore gamers and their audience was gonna stick with EA." City Football Group’s Plan to Make Soccer a Year-Round Sport A playing field all to itself One issue EA doesn't have right now is competition. The closest its got to a potential challenger in the soccer simulation gaming category is Konami. Its incipient rival released eFootball—formerly Pro Evolution Soccer—but the title has received negative reviews, with players criticizing its graphics and lack of available teams. Besides eFootball, there's no other soccer game with the collection of teams and players to compete with FIFA. EA's title usually does well enough critically and is generally well-received from fans. "With regards to fidelity, licensing, aesthetics and gameplay, there is no better simulation football game than FIFA on the market," said Jordan Oloman, a writer and consultant in the video games industry. "The gameplay is intricate, tactical and very well designed." Oloman reviewed FIFA 22 last year for IGN and said the game is a good option for a group of players due to its ease of play and accessibility. But one space the game has ignored is offline modes, which are less profitable. Online players are a cash cow for sports simulation video games, bringing in additional revenue through microtransactions for items such as clothes for a player or adding new players to a fantasy-like team. One online mode titled Ultimate Team brought in $1.49 billion in 2020 across both FIFA and Madden NFL. Digital loot boxes, which are purchased in-game and offer randomized rewards, have become controversial in the gaming industry, with critics saying they border on gambling. NBA2K publisher Take-Two is facing a class-action lawsuit over loot boxes. "EA knows at this point, because of the solid gameplay baseline, that it's going to sell every year, even if they changed virtually nothing," Oloman said. "The question is whether that brand affinity and community can persist when the FIFA name goes away. Inevitably, the name change will come as a shock and be a point of discussion for people who are used to buying the game every year without question." EA Sports Inks Sky Premier League Sponsorship as It Readies Post-FIFA Evolution Onward and upward In the soccer category, EA Sports is one of the most active brands on a global level. The brand brought in about $10.1 million from August 2021 to March 2022, according to digital activations company Horizm. Oloman said the door is open for other developers to come in and create simulation soccer games that could reach the disgruntled FIFA fan who is tired of the same old release. "If there's a new game, made with the community in mind, that focuses solely on Career Mode [which allows gamers to play through a player's entire lifelong career] and single-player simulation football, many players who don't care about the rest of the game could flock to it," he noted. "The competition could be a good thing for players in this regard, but it could also lead to a licensing war for certain teams and leagues, and mean that there are several games with a laser focus on certain aspects of simulation football, which could be costly for consumers depending on what kind of game they want," he added. "Some may just stick with EA Sports FC because it does a lot of things right and has certain relationships." EA will have to do the work of marketing the new title and reaching its audience, but wholly owning the game without a title partnership could be important toward the brand reallocating its ad spend. "The savings to the bottom line are immense," Moore said. "That could certainly fend off any competitive losses that there may be. We're talking, obviously, every year in the hundreds of millions of dollars that EA saves. Maybe in the opening couple of years, they can plow some of that money into what is already a very big marketing spend around the world. They can incrementally pile on there with a fraction of the savings to build out the brand that is EA Sports FC." Euro 2022 Sponsors Are Playing the Long Game When it Comes to Women’s Soccer

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How EA Sports Is Staying in the Game Despite End of FIFA Licensing Deal

The video game publisher has new options, and some marketing to do

Rafael Canton

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Rafael Canton