FIFA released a statement about future plans in gaming and eSports, leaving EA Sports quite troubled.
Yellow cards and red cards are being flashed back and forth. The biggest and most well-known association of football (soccer), FIFA, recently announced it wants to change and challenge the status quo of where they currently are in the gaming realm and the eSports scene. The latest release on October 15 highlighted their interest in exploring more possibilities and opportunities with many new companies. Of course, many gamers know EA and EA Sports have prominently led the way in creating sports video games.
A VGC article calls out FIFA’s release as a potential “direct shot at EA” when the post read in bold font, “The future of gaming and eSports for football stakeholders must involve more than one party controlling and exploiting all rights.” It doesn’t take a genius to imply that they are talking about EA.
The announcement continues, “Technology and mobile companies are now actively competing to be associated with FIFA, its platforms, and global tournaments. Consequently, FIFA is engaging with various industry players, including developers, investors and analysts, to build out a long-term view of the gaming, eSports and interactive entertainment sector.” It does sound like they want to explore and see what other gaming companies have to offer them.
It’s similar to when a movie series like the James Bond films have one main actor playing the same character (like Daniel Craig) across multiple films with different directors, but still keeping the main story with its core features. Perhaps, there’s been some promising new features other companies want to showcase for the popular football games, but EA has been shadowing these companies from getting their ideas incorporated into their previous games.
The most perplexing development is that it seemed that EA was first to discuss their possibility of changing their name to the popular football games they make earlier this month. The release wanted to discuss their review of “naming rights with FIFA”, which is completely separate from EA’s licenses with the Premier League, Bundesliga, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and many more.
EA Sports general manager, Cam Weber, stated, “The future of football is very big and very bright…Our priority is to ensure we have every opportunity to continue delivering the world’s greatest interactive football experiences.” The feelings appear to be mutual on both fronts, as football fans may strangely see EA Sports and FIFA as two separate entities.
More details are still to come involving the licensing dispute between EA and FIFA as EA’s ten-year FIFA naming license expires after the Qatar World Cup 2022.
