After almost three decades, one of the most successful commercial relationships in sports is over.
Months of tense negotiations between the video-game maker Electronic Arts and FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, ended without an agreement to extend a partnership that had created not so much a wildly popular game as a cultural phenomenon.
The current deal, which was to end after this year’s World Cup in Qatar, has been adjusted to run through to the Women’s World Cup next summer. Once that tournament is over, the company said, 150 million FIFA video game players will have to get used to a new name for the series: EA Sports FC.
To millions of people around the world, the letters FIFA represent not actual soccer. But a one-word shorthand for a video-game series that grew to provide the backdrop to the lives of players as diverse as Premier League pros and casual fans. Even gamers with no other relationship to the sport came to know its stars and its teams through their digital doppelgängers.
That sort of broad use created a lucrative partnership for both EA Sports and FIFA: The game has generated more than $20 billion in sales over the past two decades.
With EA and the FIFA brand set to part ways, one big question on everyone's minds is: who will pick up the FIFA license to keep making more soccer games? One possibility is Take-Two Interactive, but for now, the company isn't saying her not it's in to be the official soccer publisher. It's in to be the official soccer publisher.
Speaking to CEO Strauss Selznick ahead of today's earnings call, IGN asked if Take-Two was considering working with FIFA in the future to expand its existing sports line-up.
We're definitely interested in expanding our opportunities in sports, and FIFA has a great brand and incredible clout, but we have no current plans to discuss, Selznick replied.
It's understandable that Selznick wouldn't be able to say much for now, as if there is any discussion about a deal right now, it's likely going on behind closed doors. But Selznick's praise for the brand isn't the only reason to think Take-Two might be interested. The publisher is one of the few who could conceivably afford the reportedly very expensive license, and already has a track record of sports titles with NBA 2K, WWE 2K, plus whatever it's working on with the NFL.
EA and FIFA announced their split earlier this month, with EA citing a desire for more creative freedom as well as the expensive license among the reasons it opted to go its own way with EA Sports FC in the future. FIFA has confirmed it will continue to release games under the FIFA name, but has not yet said who it will partner with to make this happen.
Even if Take-Two goes after the FIFA license, we won't see it manifest for a while, given that EA still has FIFA 23 ahead. Take-Two has a busy year ahead anyway, with 18 planned releases. According to the Take-Two earnings report, six of those are “immersive core titles”: The Quarry, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, NBA 2K23, WWE 2K23, PGA Tour 2K23, and Herbal Space Program 2 (which has been confirmed for release in early 2023 as of this morning, after previously being pushed to sometime between April 2022 and March 2023).
There are also eight mobile games in the works, a new sports title from 2K (likely its NFL arcade game), a new franchise from Private Division, Tales from the Borderlands 2, and "one new iteration of a previously-released title available for purchase".
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