As Electronic Arts (EA) launches its new football/soccer games franchise EA Sports FC, Ampere examines the historical importance of the superseded FIFA games franchise to the company and what it will be hoping to emulate in terms of performance as the new game enters the market. 

EA Sports FC 24 arrived for everyone on 29^th September but was made available seven days in advance of launch day for those buying the Ultimate edition of the game. As soon as EA Sports FC 24 was made available, EA delisted versions of the FIFA games from console and PC digital storefronts. Gamers can still buy physical versions of these older games for now and continue playing their existing digital copies.  

The scale of EA’s FIFA franchise

The FIFA games series from EA is the biggest sports game franchise globally and the company’s biggest gaming brand. Ampere Analysis estimates that the FIFA game franchise grew from a little over $500m in annual net revenue in fiscal year 2010 to over $2bn in FY2020, representing over a third of EA’s total net revenue in that year. This growth was largely driven by the success of FIFA Ultimate Team which is estimated to have grown from net revenue of $26m in FY2010 to $1bn in FY2020. 

The recent releases of FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 have performed very strongly. Ampere data shows that in August 2023, the FIFA series of games captured 31m monthly active users (MAUs)* across PlayStation and Xbox consoles, with a majority – almost 22m - playing FIFA 23. FIFA 22 captured 5m MAUs while a significant 6m played older versions of the game. Those active players of pre-FIFA 22 games are important to note, because, as discussed below, the online support for those games is being closed soon. 

Commercial risk and challenges 

It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the re-branding of the FIFA series to EA Sports FC is one of the most important moments in EA’s history. FIFA is the company’s biggest franchise and therefore switching to a new brand brings with it considerable commercial risk. 

However, the company has done a lot to mitigate the commercial impact of the transition by implementing a huge marketing push in the run up to launch, while still retaining the important league, team and player licenses that it has held for many years. EA will be hoping that driving awareness will overcome any brand confusion and help with the transition from prior versions of FIFA to the new release where all the monetisation will take place moving forward.

The dynamics at play with transition to EA Sports FC are different to the normal annual new FIFA release

Aside from the name change, which might confuse some of the more casual buyers of FIFA or those buying gifts during the holiday season, the removal of premium versions of the games from digital storefronts changes the upgrade dynamic to an extent. This may drive more players to adopt early, but it also reduces catalogue sales of older games in the series, which remain a small but important part of the franchise revenue.  

In terms of FIFA 23 players making the transition to the new game, the same points migration process is in play as previous versions and the same Ultimate Team companion and web app upgrade process has been implemented. In fact, EA has tried to make this part of the process as unchanged as possible from previous iterations.

One major change is that EA is finishing online support for FIFA 21 and earlier versions of the game back to FIFA 18 in early November. Support for FIFA releases normally continues on for at least five years after launch. As noted, with 6m active players of these older games across console, and with limited access to new versions of FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 following their removal from storefronts, this is likely to prompt more upgrades to the latest version during November. Ampere will be watching closely to see how the transition will play out compared to last year's release FIFA 23 as shown in the chart below. 

*note MAUs are not de-duped between versions; players of multiple versions will be counted twice or more