Have you ever wondered what happened to the FIFA games by EA? When the new sports game by EA was released on September 29, 2023, it came with a new title EAFC instead of the FIFA title they had in the past years. The reason for this title change is that FIFA and EA split ways in 2022 after a long partnership that they had together. Today I will start looking into the reasons for the split and whether EA is better off without the FIFA partnership.
Why did EA and FIFA split?
The EA and FIFA split is due to a dispute between the two companies. According to Sports Pro Media, The EA side of the dispute was that they wanted to do more with the game series such as esports tournaments. FIFA on the other hand said that if they grant EA exclusive rights to this then it would stop them from getting more digital opportunities thus leading to them losing money. They only wanted the EA to have rights to the FIFA title in their soccer simulation games and to increase their annual fee to 300 million dollars. The signs of EA leaving FIFA were in a blog post in which they wrote they were thinking about possibly renaming their soccer simulation games to EA Sports instead of just FIFA putting more pressure on FIFA to agree with EA’s terms. Even after this pressure from EA, FIFA didn’t believe their demands were good enough because the rights were only for their title and the World Cup. After more negotiations over six months, EA confirmed that they would start making games by themselves and that they aren’t working with FIFA. Their contract ended on the 31st of December 2022, meaning that EA’s last game with FIFA was FIFA 23 and that after that game they would start with the EA Sports name.
Is EA better off without FIFA?
After losing the FIFA license many people wondered if EA was better off without it. The only things EA lost from the FIFA license were only their title and the right to use the World Cup which won’t have that much of an impact on EA because the licensing of the leagues they use has been done separately without FIFA’s involvement so there won’t be any big changes. Due to this, there were still many players who were anticipating the release of the new soccer simulation game from EA in September 2023. Upon the release of EA Sports FC 24 on September 22, 2023, EA has seen a massive increase in copies sold being the third best-selling game of the month and the 14th bestselling game of the year. It is safe to say that even without the license many consumers have noticed that it is still the same game and that nothing major has changed. As of now, the question is how FIFA would find a new game company that would agree to their license agreement and whether they could be more popular than EA Sports FC.
Sources: Sports business journal Sports media
