EA Sports FC unveils post-FIFA rebranding
Series future to be unveiled in July.
Today brings our first look at branding for EA Sports FC, the new name for EA's best-selling FIFA series, before a more detailed look at the retitled franchise arrives in July.
In the meantime, you should expect to see EA Sports FC branding plastered across football in the coming days, EA warned. This will include advertising in matches across the Premier League and WSL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1.
EA's press release today is filled with quotes designed to reinforce the support it has for its branding change, including the bosses of many of those leagues. In it, EA also describes Sports FC as a "platform to create, innovate and grow new football experiences, connecting hundreds of millions of fans through console, mobile, online and esports products".
It's a statement which hints at how EA may begin to evolve its annual series beyond the typical fare FIFA fans have come to expect year after year - though releasing the next iteration of that in late 2023 will, of course, remain EA's immediate focus.
"EA Sports FC will be a symbol for the sport, a symbol of innovation and change, and we're energised to show our fans more about the future in July," the brand's boss Nick Wlodyka said.
As for the rebranding itself, EA has described the shape of Sports FC's new logo as representative of a "dominant shape in football culture" the sphere - no, sorry - the triangle.
"From passing techniques to set plays, the [triangle] shape has also been woven into the DNA of EA Sports football experiences for decades," EA wrote, "from the isometric angles of our very first 8-bit experiences and the triangular polygons that make up every pixel of our most modern games, as well the iconic player indicator symbol that appears above every athlete in every match."
EA officially announced it was ditching the FIFA branding in May last year, with last autumn's FIFA 23 the final game made by EA to use the name. The high-profile split between EA and football's top governing body ended a near-30-year run of annualised footy games, which regularly sit amongst the world's best-selling video games each year.
The change had been on the cards for some time, as reports suggested FIFA wanted to "more than double" the price of EA's licensing deal as the publisher continued to rake in billions from the game and its lucrative (and controversial) loot boxes. EA, meanwhile, reportedly wanted to explore other avenues using the FIFA licence, such as video game tournaments and digital products like NFTs.
We first heard of EA's plans to ditch the FIFA branding back in October 2021, when EA first said it was "exploring" the idea of going it alone. Shortly after, a trademark for EA Sports FC was spotted, suggesting EA had already settled on a new nametag.
There's certainly no love lost between the two companies, either. EA boss Andrew Wilson memorably ramped up the rhetoric by describing FIFA as simply "four letters on the front of the box" and an "impediment" to the publisher's ambitions for the franchise. FIFA president Gianni Infantino meanwhile suggested the organisation did not need EA's hugely-successful series, and that it would simply take its branding elsewhere. "The constant is the FIFA name and it will remain forever and remain THE BEST," Infantino said.
It remains to be seen if FIFA can muster a big-budget rival to EA's dominant effort. In the meantime, FIFA licensed an array of World Cup Web3, blockchain and mobile apps in time for the tournament late last year in Qatar.