How FIFA a Te football e sport
Hphenomenally successful video game is now more popular with many youngsters than th Itself – sparking a battle for the next generation of fans
It is the phenomenon that has become fundamental to the sport that gave it life: the hyper-reality football video game franchise FIFA, launched 28 years ago and now a significant player itself in the finance and politics of the global game.
Even aside from its own thundering commercial success, FIFA – annually updated and relaunched under the EA Sports brand – has made its presence felt in the real-world game it mimics. The latest financial results from Fifa, football’s world governing body from which EA Sports licenses the game, revealed that in a pandemic-hit 2020 agreements with gaming companies were its single highest revenue stream.
For EA Sports’ parent company, Electronic Arts (EA), the trajectory is upwards. Revenue for the last quarter of last year was up £58million from the same period in 2019 to £1.2billion. FIFA 21 is its most successful launch ever. The company says it had 35 million individual “unique” console players on FIFA 20 and 150 million playing across all formats.
The market values EA at £28billion. To put that in perspective, Manchester United, the largest publicly-quoted football club in the world, is valued at £2billion. Financially, EA is a giant compared to those who dominate football, but the impact of FIFA could be felt even more keenly in years to come.
Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus president and leading agent provocateur when it comes to the future of the European game, has warned that the current generation of 16 to 24-yearolds, who have grown up on FIFA, are focused on interaction and less interested in watching the full-game real-world 90 minutes. The growth of esports – gamers competing against one another – has been rapid. The implicit threat to the value of the broadcast contracts that are the financial basis of the sport itself leads to an existential conundrum: could FIFA end up eating football itself?
‘Football is playing catch-up with what motivates modern audiences’
As a technical and artistic accomplishment, FIFA is an astonishing simulacrum of the elite game – from the skill Mohamed Salah, to his facial expression, to his goal celebration. It is not hard to see the attraction, although it is a bigger leap to imagine a scenario in which the avatar of Kylian Mbappe, the FIFA 21 cover star, is worth more to him one day than what he does on a pitch.
The game, created in EA Sports’ Vancouver studios in the early Nineties, has sold 325 million copies and is available in 21 languages. EA Sports will not discuss how much of EA’S total revenues FIFA accounts for, or how much is invested in each edition, but the way in which the company sees its partnership with football will be critical to those who have long-term skin in the game. In particular, like Agnelli, the owners of big European clubs. Answering questions via email, David Jackson, a vicepresident of EA Sports, says it is a critical part of FIFA’S success that its characters are based on real-life footballers, which helps “blur the lines between the virtual and real worlds of global football” for gamers. Jackson insists that “real world football will always be more popular, and rightly so”, but what constitutes the “real world” for a generation who never watch their team play in person?
“The manner in which the modern football fan engages with their favourite league, team or athlete bears little resemblance to the relationships of even 10 years ago,” Jackson says. “As fandom has evolved, football has had to contend with that shift and is playing a little bit of catch-up regarding what truly motivates modern audiences.
“If a kid growing up in Tokyo or Toronto becomes a PSG fan, it’s unlikely to be because they have visited the Parc des Princes. It’s much more likely that their favourite player plays for PSG and they grew to learn about them partly through FIFA.”
A backlash from star players
FIFA’S popularity among the younger generation may be beyond doubt, but for the first time there have been rumblings of hostility from within the sport. Stars have been enthusiastic players themselves – including Lionel Messi – and eager to feature on the cover of new editions. Then in an interview with Telegraph Sport in November, the agent Mino
Raiola declared his intention to challenge the licensing agreements that EA Sports has with Fifa, and various leagues, for the use of the intellectual property rights of his clients.
There was support on social media from Raiola client Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and later Gareth Bale, represented by Stellar Group. It is understood that EA Sports has responded and there is no ongoing legal case.
Jackson says that global football presents a “complex and often fractured licensing landscape” compared with the relative simplicity of American sport. “No individual representative body has full authority over everything related to league, team and athlete IP in football,” he says. He will not say who gets paid what. But it is clear from what Jackson says that EA Sports sees itself as a crucial partner “connect[ing] highly valued and famous IP with 150 million players worldwide.”
The game has also been criticised for discouraging children from enjoying the benefits of the real thing, especially among parents struggling to limit screen-time in lockdown – an accusation that prompts a forthright
‘If a kid in Tokyo is a PSG fan it’s more likely because of FIFA than because they visited Parc des Princes’
response from Jackson. “The reality is that for a person living without access to wide open spaces or the means to connect with a community through physical play (like for example, in a lockdown), games like Fifa can help people exhibit their fandom in a very productive and mentally stimulating way.
“It’s a pretty condescending and privileged view to take that kids should be outside playing. What if they can’t? What if their environment is unsafe in enabling that?”
The battle for new fans starts now
Either way, FIFA’S success suggests that EA Sports is winning the argument with the next generation. Jackson says the habits of 16 to 24-year-olds are changing in many ways. “Mr Agnelli is absolutely right about the transition of consumption through generations of fans,” he says, “but video games is just one of many contemporary approaches to fandom.”
These are trends that are likely to strike fear into the hearts of those tasked with projecting football’s long-term revenues. What will be the game’s relationship with its digital twin? Both are competing for the attention of a new generation. FIFA is a slick, engaging, interactive experience. Access is by no means cheap at £59.99 for FIFA 21 for the PS5, but it is less expensive than a Premier League season ticket or a pay-tv subscription.
In the early years, it was said that Fifa underpriced its licensing rights offering to EA Sports – failing to predict the game’s huge potential. That has changed, and in a year when international tournaments faced postponements, its total licensing agreements were worth £115million to Fifa. EA Sports would not comment on whether, as anticipated, its deal was up for renewal this year.
For football fans of a certain generation, “Fifa” will always be about the World Cup finals, or more recently a morally bankrupt organisation that was purged post-2010. For the next generation, “Fifa” means something very different. It is for their attention that clubs, competitions and governing bodies – old football – must compete against a very powerful, very modern form of the game.