FIFA Is Asking For $1 Billion From EA For The Naming Rights To The Sports Series

EA and FIFA have been strug­gling to come to an agree­ment in regards to the extreme­ly pop­u­lar foot­ball series–and it all comes down to money.

The New York Times reports that EA and FIFA have spent the last two years in nego­ti­a­tions over the future of the video games series, which the news site report­ed has brought more than $20 bil­lion for EA over the last 20 years. The series has paid div­i­dends for FIFA, which has made about $150 mil­lion per year from EA’s game–due to its licens­ing agree­ment. This make’s the game FIFA’s most valu­able com­mer­cial deal overall.

How­ev­er, the EA/FIFA deal is set to expire at the end of 2022, and right now, talks are break­ing down between the two (accord­ing to NYT’s sources). Recent­ly, EA Sports GM Cam Weber released a state­ment say­ing EA was con­sid­er­ing its options, one of them being drop­ping the FIFA name alto­geth­er. Trade­mark fil­ings have sug­gest­ed EA could rebrand the series EA Sport FC. There are also ongo­ing rumors that EA’s next foot­ball game might adopt a free-to-play live ser­vice model.

Accord­ing to the NYT report, FIFA wants “more than dou­ble” what it cur­rent­ly gets from EA, and its ask­ing for $1 bil­lion for each four-year World Cup cycle.

FIFA and EA also can’t find com­mon ground on what the over­all rights pack­age would include. Accord­ing to this report, FIFA is ask­ing to lim­it its exclu­siv­i­ty deal with EA to the foot­ball game only. Mean­while, EA is look­ing to expand its agree­ments to also include things like show­ing real game high­lights and sell­ing NFT’s among oth­er things.

EA cur­rent­ly has more than 300 sep­a­rate licens­ing agree­ments with var­i­ous foot­ball orga­ni­za­tions around the world, giv­ing them access to more than 17,000 play­er names and like­ness­es. It’s obvi­ous that EA could con­tin­ue the series with­out FIFA.

The exist­ing deal between FIFA and EA gives the gam­ing giant the rights to use FIFA’s name and logo in the series title, and allow­ing the World Cup to be includ­ed into the game.

The FIFA series makes mon­ey not just from ini­tial game sales, but also from its rather lucra­tive Ulti­mate Team Mode, which brings in more than $1 bil­lion every year. EA just recent­ly stat­ed that only 10% of their Ulti­mate Team play­ers spend mon­ey on packs.