If 2021 was the year of the disappearance of PES, with Konami setting aside the historic brand to switch to eFootball (a name which, moreover, could be abandoned soon, perhaps to distance itself from the failure of the project), 2022 it could instead be the year of farewell to FIFA.
The rumors of a name change for the famous Electronic Arts football simulation began to spread last October, and at the basis of this choice, there would be first of all a difference of views for the renewal of the rights related to the use of the FIFA brand, with the football federation that would have asked for a figure deemed exaggerated by the American software house.
MATTER OF MONEY
In recent months, the rumors have died down, and today they come back to light up with the indiscretion of one of the most reliable insiders in the videogame sector, or the journalist Jeff Grubb. In the last episode of the GrubbSnax podcast, in fact, Grubb confirmed that EA’s choice would be mainly linked to a matter of money, and added that internally the project is called EA Sports FC – in full, EA Sports Football Club. Not surprisingly, it is the same name that, as it emerged last October, the publisher registered with the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office and the EUIPO.
The rumors of October, in more detail, reported a request from FIFA that would have been 2.5 billion dollars spread over the next 10 years and therefore increased by 1 billion compared to the agreement reached for the past 10 years. An increase that EA considers unjustified, especially considering that it must then treat the rights of the teams and leagues separately (did someone say Piemonte Calcio ?).
THE RIGHT MOMENT
Grubb, however, specified that the final name could also vary: what seems certain, however, is that the marriage between EA Sports and FIFA, after decades of success, is destined to dissolve. We do not know if this revolution on the surface will also correspond to a deeper one, in eFootball style (but done with more criteria, we hope), with the intention of transforming the saga into a platform, thus abandoning the model that provides for a new chapter every year.
For EA, however, it is certainly the best time for a drastic change: the rival of all time, or the football title of Konami, is experiencing an identity crisis. And at the same time, the American software house over the years has managed to directly associate football not with the FIFA brand, but with that of EA Sports, with patches on the uniforms of the referees and customized graphics in the Premier League, and from this year also in Serie A.