Why EA FC 24's release is a $150m DISASTER for FIFA

Paul Macdonald

• Updated: 27 Sept 2023 10:46 BST
• 5 min read

The much-anticipated EA FC 24 will be officially released on Friday 29 September and it’s a new era for the game for many reasons.

Firstly, it’s the first time in three decades of console titles that football’s governing body, FIFA, won’t have their name attached to the front.

The relationship between FIFA and EA was long-standing and mutually beneficial - EA got the endorsement of the brand name and in return, FIFA, for not doing very much, got a cheque in the post - worth up to $150million per year.

Indeed, EA didn’t even have to deal with FIFA to secure individual partnerships with leagues and competitions across the world to have permission to use official trademarks and names. As mentioned by EA CEO Andrew Wilson: “What we get from FIFA in a non-World Cup year is the four letters on the front of the box.”

So when FIFA’s licensing agreement came up for renewal in 2022, someone within the organisation must have looked at some numbers, and saw dollar signs. EA, including game sales and in-game purchases around the much-vaunted Ultimate Team, are thought to make anywhere up to $1.2 Billion per YEAR in revenue.

Therefore FIFA demanded an eye-watering $1billion over four years for EA to continue to use their brand. It was close to a 100% increase on the previous arrangement, and that was too rich, and represented zero value for money, to EA. They parted company, and so now, we have EA FC 24.

But FIFA’s gross misunderstanding of the importance of their brand, and their staggering hubris, will likely go down in history as one of the stupidest marketing and commercial decisions in the history of football, or indeed any sport.

FIFA's 'money for nothing'

Firstly, it was money for literally no effort. All FIFA had to do was hand over its brand to a party which had proven over 30 years that it could handle and respect it. Now, FIFA, with absolutely no in-house experience, will have to navigate a notoriously difficult gaming industry to develop, test, build and market a game from scratch. As EA’s David Jackson, VP of Marketing, said: “Nothing is impossible. But it’s just not that easy.”

All of these elements COST money with absolutely no guarantee of reward. It has taken decades to make the game synonymous with its projected 150 million players worldwide, and EA have instant access to that audience to simply tell them the name has been updated. Players won’t care, particularly when there is absolutely no sign of a separate FIFA launch anywhere on the horizon, despite Gianni Infantino’s claims that a game could be released in 2024.

Furthermore, FIFA has no licensing agreements to offer beyond its official tournaments, such as the men’s and women’s World Cups, and, at club level, the Club World Cup. They would need to negotiate all of these with clubs and competitions who not only aren’t particularly keen on dealing with them, but it’s highly likely EA will have exclusivity arrangements for the most important assets.

It must be stressed that FIFA has no idea what it is doing, attempting to enter a space in which it has no history, taking on the most popular console game in the world, all because they oversold their brand and therefore overplayed their hand.

Even if a FIFA game ever sees the light of day - and that remains a HUGE if - the money that will need to be invested up front to make it a success or to even get it in front of the target audience is thought to be close to a cost of $200m. And given the history of the likes of Pro Evolution Soccer, which had a loyal audience but one that was ultimately crushed by FIFA over time, the precedent is there that it is a huge task to change user habits for a game like this.

FIFA actually launched its own range of blockchain and metaverse related games for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar last December. Don’t remember that? Well, neither does anyone else. The games were a total disaster and if they are a sign of things to come, FIFA 24 won’t be keeping EA executives up at night.

Has an organisation ever turned the easiest cheque you could cash into a potential commercial disaster quite like this?