“It’s four letters on the front of the box”: EA CEO Goes for the Jugular in EA Sports FC 24 and FIFA Dispute

In a previously sent internal memo last year, EA CEO Andrew Wilson had a less curated, more blunt opinion of the breakup between EA Sports and the footballing governing body FIFA. In public he’s been more subtle and polite with his disdain for the previous business relationship, and the reasons behind it breaking down, but in the internal memo, the gloves certainly seemed to be off.

EA Sports FC 24 or FIFA 24?

Much has been made of the well-publicized breakup between the two partners, one which was previously unimaginable. Typically, if you mentioned FIFA to a gamer, they’d instantly think of EA Sports’ footballing sim, and vice versa, but that connection has come to an end, and we now look set to break new ground in the coming months, with the release of the first non-FIFA footballing sim EA Sports FC 24.

FIFA and EA had enjoyed an incredibly fruitful and profitable partnership over three decades, with the footballing sim being the main push to EA’s dominance in the sports-sim market, and for sure their main money maker, with the likes of FIFA Ultimate Team returning profits that’d dwarf other developers entire yearly revenue alone.

Related: “FIFA who?”: EA Sports FC 24 Showcases Official Gameplay Trailer and Deep-Dive Details

However, that all came to a crashing halt when it was publicly announced that EA were considering ending the partnership with FIFA. Many considered this nothing more than a negotiating tactic, but a few trademarks registered later, and we now have the EA Sports FC brand, rather than the annual FIFA # release.

This was never confirmed, but the leading reason behind the breakup was the sudden and greedy increase from FIFA demanding their licensing fee be double to $2.5billion over the next decade. This seemed too much of a price to pay for EA, and they decided against it.

Last year, there was much mud-slinging going on, with both parties involved attempting to save face and blame the other party for the breakdown in partnership. Most of the public statements were polite on the face of it, even if they were finger-pointing, but the internal memos leaked last year paint a different picture. CEO Andrew Wilson said.

“I’m going to be more open… more open than I’ve been with the outside world. We’ve had a great relationship with FIFA over the past 30-odd years. We’ve created billions in value… it’s just huge. We’ve created one of the biggest entertainment properties on the planet.

I would argue – and this may be a little biased – that the FIFA brand has more meaning as a video game than it does a governing body of soccer. We don’t take that for granted and we try not to be arrogant. We’ve worked really hard to try and make FIFA understand what we need for the future. Basically, what we get from FIFA in a non-World Cup year is the four letters on the front of the box, in a world where most people don’t even see the box anymore because they buy the game digitally.”

It is difficult to argue with this scathing indictment of the situation, and many football fans around the world would agree that the video game is the first thing to come to mind with the name FIFA, rather than that of one of the most contentious and disliked sporting governing bodies.

Related: EA Sports FC 24 Breaks Mold and Ignorant Fan’s Hearts as they Confirm Gigantic Change to Ultimate Team

Wilson went on and described some of the pitfalls of the relationship and licensing agreement.

“Our FIFA licence has actually precluded us from doing a lot of this stuff. Again, FIFA is just the name on the box, but they’ve precluded our ability to be able to branch into the areas that players want. Our players are telling us they want us to move really quick: ‘we want you guys doing stuff fast’. And in order to do that, we need a level of freedom to be truly creative, innovative and experiment in the marketplace. Because of the nature of the approval timetables and the various things around our FIFA licence, that’s actually been really hard and we’re moving much slower than we want.”

How this’ll change the landscape of the upcoming EA Sports FC 24 (and further releases) is unknown, but many fans think that the ‘level of freedom’ comment means that the footballing sim will be moving towards the live-service model used by the likes of Apex Legends. Whether this ends up being the case, or EA makes some amalgam of the yearly releases and a live-service model, or it was all a load of smoke-and-mirrors and the same cookie-cutter releases will continue is unknown, but for now, between the drama and the anticipation, this is a huge year for EA Sports FC 24.

Will you be picking up EA Sports FC 24? Do you think the lack of the FIFA name on the box will mean failure for EA Sports? Let us know in the comments!

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