7 ms·

FIFA seeks $1B+ (per 4 years) from EA for name usage

55 points by jrnkntl 5y ago

Keyframe 5y ago
I don't think EA would lapse the license. Too much Tencent going on around the block to risk it. This might be a negotiation maneuver.
- dncornholio 5y ago
  It definitely is. FIFA knows they're missing out on money big time. EA just published this to create leverage from their customers.
vultour 5y ago
Sales of games like this always amazed me. It seems like every year somebody tweaks a yaml config with the player details and hits build - voilà brand new game is out, time to shell out another $60.
- siva7 5y ago
  FIFA is basically a cash cow unprecedented in gaming. Unfortuantely for EA that cash has to be "equally" split with FIFA.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    I'd actually disagree here. Like, multiple mobile games make upwards of 1bn+ per year, and I'd strongly suspect that a bunch of the other sports franchises make similar amounts of money. Yes, FIFA is probably the best known globally, but that doesn't mean that they make the most money.
    - siva7 5y ago
      You're right, i should have been more precise
- pg_bot 5y ago
  Madden hasn't changed in a decade and it still tops the sales charts every year. It has to have the best economics of any game franchise in existence.
  - kasperni 5y ago
    American football is a niche sport outside of the US. I've never heard of anyone playing Madden or seen it on any top sales lists.
    - tzs 5y ago
      But the US is a really big market. Something can be a niche everywhere else and still make a ton of sales. Madden has cumulative sales, according to Wikipedia, of 250 million copies. The FIFA series has cumulative sales of 325 million. I'm having a hard time finding consistent annuals sales numbers. Random Googling suggests each new FIFA year sells around 24 million, and each new Madden year around 5 or 6 million. But Wikipedia says Madden was at cumulative 100 million in 2013, which combined with them saying it is 250 million now, gives an average of over 18 million a year. Maybe the numbers I found on annual sales were only counting sales of whatever was the latest version? In that case, if a significant number of people who buy Madden X do not do so until after Madden X+1 comes out that could explain it. Madden X could sell 6 million to the people who want the latest version, and then another 12 million in subsequent years to people who wait until it is a bargain bin game.
      - kasperni 5y ago
        Sure it can generate tons of sale, but "best economics of any game franchise in existence."... [1] contains some numbers, Madden is probably placed around number 30 if you look at only the numbers for video games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media...
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  From my experience with the NHL franchise. If you're a casual or light player of the game you probably won't notice a difference except for the time rosters. But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game. The main revenue source for these games isn't even the actual game. It's the online experience where I've heard stories of people paying thousands for their online team.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Also from my experience with the NHL games, things change at a snails pace and not always for the better. It's been a few years since I've played one, but I remember the same buggy moves being possible for multiple years and then strange quality of life decreases in various seasons modes. I quit when the gacha team stuff was starting. I'd hope the whales led to huge game improvements, but I wonder if they actually used that money to make huge changes would they just piss off their fanbase?
  - Bilal_io 5y ago
    > But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game. I think that's the point people are trying to make. If you're making a very small change,why are you charging people for the full price again? They could push an update for a small free each year. And resell the game for full price every 4 years.
    - that_guy_iain 5y ago
      Who said they make a very small change? I said they improve a single aspect. The aspects are normally massively changed. And the point people are making is they can't spot the differnce and for them there is no difference. No there is, but they're not good enough to feel or see the difference. It's like saying there isn't a difference between each version release of a programming language. If you're a newbie programmer you won't notice the difference but if you're an advance user you notice it instantly and it changes how you do things. One of the reasons I normally upgrade every year is that I found if I missed a year the number of changes that I would experience with basically overload me when I did upgrade.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  If the only value proposition of the game, as compared to competition, is to have real team and player names and their real up-to-date stats, then it's only fair to pay properly for that business advantage. 250M per year seems fair to me. If they don't want to, I'm sure there'll be another company willing to pay that amount for their game can be called “FIFA 2022”. AFAIK, oil companies also has to pay for the right to extract oil from the ground to the owner. Why would this case be different.
  - djmips 5y ago
    Sounds more like extortion. EAC built this franchise from the ground up since 1993 and FIFA had nothing to do with it other than four letters.
    - tut-urut-utut 5y ago
      One can argue that exactly those four letters is what made this franchise successful. FIFA in the game name give it “official” branding, which they would never have otherwise.
    - dejw 5y ago
      and now EA is milking teenagers with builtin gambling mechanics. there's always a bigger fish and in this case I am happy to see that. Didn't FIFA also have an exclusive contract which prevented PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) from acquiring licenses for team names?
      - fredoralive 5y ago
        Buying exclusive rights to teams / leagues to cripple the competition is a fairly standard EA play. However it is important to note the exclusive contracts are between EA Sports and the teams / leagues, not FIFA. The main things FIFA brings to the table for EA is the name, and the World Cup competition. EA clearly things they aren't worth as much as FIFA wants for them, hence the current wrangling. If the deals falls through then "EA Sports FC" (or whatver it ends up being called) will still have all the teams / leagues locked up. So a theoretical FIFA game from someone else would presumably still have the same disadvantages as Pro Evo etc.
- TheCondor 5y ago
  Do they pull more from that than they would a pure subscription model? $10 a month and it continuously updates stats, adds new players, etc..
- tephra 5y ago
  I'm a somewhat frequent player. While yes player updates are a part of it there's is more. Firstly players and rosters usually gets updates throughout, so if I open my FIFA 21 now it would certainly update rosters. In new titles usually we'll get some new leagues (nice for people who wants to play a team/league in their country). IIRC in FIFA 22 you can create your own team now (waited for that one for a long time). Worth noting that stuff that people want like a much better player career mode seems to never be updated.
  - dncornholio 5y ago
    All your comments validate the parents post though. Nothing but yaml and UI tweaks :)
    - tephra 5y ago
      Apparently they also did some very detailed motion capture on individual players. Without access to the codebase of course I (or you/parent) don't know how much code they had to change of course but if the game is better I'll happily pay for it to enjoy it.
- djmips 5y ago
  That's an ignorant take. The game has a lot of work put in every year to all aspects.
harry8 5y ago
Such a good opportunity for EA to mount an Anti-FIFA corruption campaign in game. Mess with some trade rules. Images of Sep Blatter bathing in the rain of cash at the press conference. Force players to choose between FI-FI-FA legacy league and the new hotness. FIFA are corrupt from top to bottom. EA have a direct channel to a huge slab of their market to tear the FIFA politicians with their snouts in the trough a new one. Might actually make next years' game update a lot more interesting than changing the player lists. I'd like to be less cynical about the prospects of anyone actually cleaning up corruption anywhere right now. I really would. Do you prefer Ivanka or Hunter flavours of corruption? We can't even vote that out so the Military Industrial Complex is pretty safe. No chance of health reform either. Nobody likes Ivanka or Hunter and there they go shovelling more money than you will in a decade just this month. "Now do the $other_side who are worse!" edit: last para anti-corruption rant
- karmakaze 5y ago
  Make all the in-game presentation accurate but comical so it falls under 'parody'.
- Shadonototra 5y ago
  interesting how people want to make EA looks like the good guys in the story let's talk about gambling mechanics in their games, shall we? sounds like people want to make this a political affair, what's the real reason? smells like anti FIFA propaganda also reminds me of how the US wanted to force some EU clubs to ditch the Champion's League for their own "Cup" thingy shady shady
- namdnay 5y ago
  And the following year FIFA will give the licence to another developer, any everyone will switch to that. PES was a far better game than FIFA, but everyone wanted to play with their favourite players and teams. There's no way EA will kill that cash cow
  - MarkCole 5y ago
    The article mentions that the FIFA license only includes rights to the name, logo and rights to the World Cup. The player and teams name, likenesses and logos are governed by licenses with other organisations.
kubafu 5y ago
Slightly off topic: Sensible World of Soccer 96/97 and earlier ones had all real player names and those nice pixelated player pictures which quite accurately resembled players' real-life look. Then (?) Sensible Soccer '98 came out and suddenly there were no real players names anymore, not sure about the pictures though. Does anyone know if it was due to a copyright claim from FIFA?
periheli0n 5y ago
FIFA wants a piece of the cake. A symptom of the game industry growing immensely during the last couple of years. Another symptom is the Epic vs. Apple conflict. As the amounts of money made in the sector grow almost without bounds, so does the aggressiveness of the players. Today‘s game industry is the 20th century‘s movie industry.
ksec 5y ago
You now have to paid FIFA, every single team in the European League, and Champion League for using their name, logos, colour of their shirt. etc etc. Extra money for having big name player faces for marketing on the box or graphics as well as their 3D face modelling appearing in their game. How much of that $60 you are paying actually goes to the game and not some licensing? I am not against licensing fees per se, but it is getting out of hand. You would expect they have more resources with all the success to continue to improve football / soccer games. But no, I have so much more fun with Winning Eleven / Pro Evolution Soccer in the late 90s and 00s than all the crap we have now. It is actually a lot of the same with Remasters, something about the act of making games is lost.
- rambojazz 5y ago
  Remasters of very old games are usually very enjoyable.
- lcnmrn 5y ago
  We need a street football (soccer) game and procedural generated stadiums, players, teams. OpenAI can contribute a top engine to an open source game.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    I mean, those must exist. The reason EA dominates the market is part network effect and name-recognition, but mostly that they've developed really good sports games, and even with all the aggravating nonsense piled on top, nobody has really challenged them on the second part.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
eldaisfish 5y ago
All other points aside, it is truly astounding that the non-profit organisation FIFA requires billions of dollars just to license out their name to a video game. If FIFA really is a non-profit, why is there a need for all this money? Some context: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/30/fifa-profits-sepp-blatter-_n_7474808.html https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/30/fifa-profits-sep... >So where does this money go? Well last year [2014] Fifa paid out £26.1 million in salaries to its top 13 executives. >The organisation does not say how much it pays Sepp Blatter or other senior officials but "compensation is in line with major international and Swiss companies".
nyxaiur 5y ago
You have to understand that EA makes more than $1.5bn annually with a steep upwards trajectory. They are achieving this with mostly predatory micro transactions. They also have now 4 generations of game engines running the Fifa 22 games. One for the switch, one for pc and old-gen consoles and one for the new gen. If you are playing on anything else than new gen consoles you are paying 60$ for an updated xml file and some art assets players are also loosing all the progress and money spent over the last year. That said FIFA is at least as shady as EA so they can both burn to the ground.

55 points by jrnkntl 5y ago

I don't think EA would lapse the license. Too much Tencent going on around the block to risk it. This might be a negotiation maneuver.

dncornholio 5y ago
It definitely is. FIFA knows they're missing out on money big time. EA just published this to create leverage from their customers.

vultour 5y ago

Sales of games like this always amazed me. It seems like every year somebody tweaks a yaml config with the player details and hits build - voilà brand new game is out, time to shell out another $60.

siva7 5y ago
FIFA is basically a cash cow unprecedented in gaming. Unfortuantely for EA that cash has to be "equally" split with FIFA.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  I'd actually disagree here. Like, multiple mobile games make upwards of 1bn+ per year, and I'd strongly suspect that a bunch of the other sports franchises make similar amounts of money. Yes, FIFA is probably the best known globally, but that doesn't mean that they make the most money.
  - siva7 5y ago
    You're right, i should have been more precise
pg_bot 5y ago
Madden hasn't changed in a decade and it still tops the sales charts every year. It has to have the best economics of any game franchise in existence.
- kasperni 5y ago
  American football is a niche sport outside of the US. I've never heard of anyone playing Madden or seen it on any top sales lists.
  - tzs 5y ago
    But the US is a really big market. Something can be a niche everywhere else and still make a ton of sales. Madden has cumulative sales, according to Wikipedia, of 250 million copies. The FIFA series has cumulative sales of 325 million. I'm having a hard time finding consistent annuals sales numbers. Random Googling suggests each new FIFA year sells around 24 million, and each new Madden year around 5 or 6 million. But Wikipedia says Madden was at cumulative 100 million in 2013, which combined with them saying it is 250 million now, gives an average of over 18 million a year. Maybe the numbers I found on annual sales were only counting sales of whatever was the latest version? In that case, if a significant number of people who buy Madden X do not do so until after Madden X+1 comes out that could explain it. Madden X could sell 6 million to the people who want the latest version, and then another 12 million in subsequent years to people who wait until it is a bargain bin game.
    - kasperni 5y ago
      Sure it can generate tons of sale, but "best economics of any game franchise in existence."... [1] contains some numbers, Madden is probably placed around number 30 if you look at only the numbers for video games. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media...
that_guy_iain 5y ago
From my experience with the NHL franchise. If you're a casual or light player of the game you probably won't notice a difference except for the time rosters. But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game. The main revenue source for these games isn't even the actual game. It's the online experience where I've heard stories of people paying thousands for their online team.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  Also from my experience with the NHL games, things change at a snails pace and not always for the better. It's been a few years since I've played one, but I remember the same buggy moves being possible for multiple years and then strange quality of life decreases in various seasons modes. I quit when the gacha team stuff was starting. I'd hope the whales led to huge game improvements, but I wonder if they actually used that money to make huge changes would they just piss off their fanbase?
- Bilal_io 5y ago
  > But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game. I think that's the point people are trying to make. If you're making a very small change,why are you charging people for the full price again? They could push an update for a small free each year. And resell the game for full price every 4 years.
  - that_guy_iain 5y ago
    Who said they make a very small change? I said they improve a single aspect. The aspects are normally massively changed. And the point people are making is they can't spot the differnce and for them there is no difference. No there is, but they're not good enough to feel or see the difference. It's like saying there isn't a difference between each version release of a programming language. If you're a newbie programmer you won't notice the difference but if you're an advance user you notice it instantly and it changes how you do things. One of the reasons I normally upgrade every year is that I found if I missed a year the number of changes that I would experience with basically overload me when I did upgrade.
tut-urut-utut 5y ago
If the only value proposition of the game, as compared to competition, is to have real team and player names and their real up-to-date stats, then it's only fair to pay properly for that business advantage. 250M per year seems fair to me. If they don't want to, I'm sure there'll be another company willing to pay that amount for their game can be called “FIFA 2022”. AFAIK, oil companies also has to pay for the right to extract oil from the ground to the owner. Why would this case be different.
- djmips 5y ago
  Sounds more like extortion. EAC built this franchise from the ground up since 1993 and FIFA had nothing to do with it other than four letters.
  - tut-urut-utut 5y ago
    One can argue that exactly those four letters is what made this franchise successful. FIFA in the game name give it “official” branding, which they would never have otherwise.
  - dejw 5y ago
    and now EA is milking teenagers with builtin gambling mechanics. there's always a bigger fish and in this case I am happy to see that. Didn't FIFA also have an exclusive contract which prevented PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) from acquiring licenses for team names?
    - fredoralive 5y ago
      Buying exclusive rights to teams / leagues to cripple the competition is a fairly standard EA play. However it is important to note the exclusive contracts are between EA Sports and the teams / leagues, not FIFA. The main things FIFA brings to the table for EA is the name, and the World Cup competition. EA clearly things they aren't worth as much as FIFA wants for them, hence the current wrangling. If the deals falls through then "EA Sports FC" (or whatver it ends up being called) will still have all the teams / leagues locked up. So a theoretical FIFA game from someone else would presumably still have the same disadvantages as Pro Evo etc.
TheCondor 5y ago
Do they pull more from that than they would a pure subscription model? $10 a month and it continuously updates stats, adds new players, etc..
tephra 5y ago
I'm a somewhat frequent player. While yes player updates are a part of it there's is more. Firstly players and rosters usually gets updates throughout, so if I open my FIFA 21 now it would certainly update rosters. In new titles usually we'll get some new leagues (nice for people who wants to play a team/league in their country). IIRC in FIFA 22 you can create your own team now (waited for that one for a long time). Worth noting that stuff that people want like a much better player career mode seems to never be updated.
- dncornholio 5y ago
  All your comments validate the parents post though. Nothing but yaml and UI tweaks :)
  - tephra 5y ago
    Apparently they also did some very detailed motion capture on individual players. Without access to the codebase of course I (or you/parent) don't know how much code they had to change of course but if the game is better I'll happily pay for it to enjoy it.
djmips 5y ago
That's an ignorant take. The game has a lot of work put in every year to all aspects.

harry8 5y ago

Such a good opportunity for EA to mount an Anti-FIFA corruption campaign in game. Mess with some trade rules. Images of Sep Blatter bathing in the rain of cash at the press conference. Force players to choose between FI-FI-FA legacy league and the new hotness. FIFA are corrupt from top to bottom. EA have a direct channel to a huge slab of their market to tear the FIFA politicians with their snouts in the trough a new one. Might actually make next years' game update a lot more interesting than changing the player lists. I'd like to be less cynical about the prospects of anyone actually cleaning up corruption anywhere right now. I really would. Do you prefer Ivanka or Hunter flavours of corruption? We can't even vote that out so the Military Industrial Complex is pretty safe. No chance of health reform either. Nobody likes Ivanka or Hunter and there they go shovelling more money than you will in a decade just this month. "Now do the $other_side who are worse!" edit: last para anti-corruption rant

karmakaze 5y ago
Make all the in-game presentation accurate but comical so it falls under 'parody'.
Shadonototra 5y ago
interesting how people want to make EA looks like the good guys in the story let's talk about gambling mechanics in their games, shall we? sounds like people want to make this a political affair, what's the real reason? smells like anti FIFA propaganda also reminds me of how the US wanted to force some EU clubs to ditch the Champion's League for their own "Cup" thingy shady shady
namdnay 5y ago
And the following year FIFA will give the licence to another developer, any everyone will switch to that. PES was a far better game than FIFA, but everyone wanted to play with their favourite players and teams. There's no way EA will kill that cash cow
- MarkCole 5y ago
  The article mentions that the FIFA license only includes rights to the name, logo and rights to the World Cup. The player and teams name, likenesses and logos are governed by licenses with other organisations.

kubafu 5y ago

Slightly off topic: Sensible World of Soccer 96/97 and earlier ones had all real player names and those nice pixelated player pictures which quite accurately resembled players' real-life look. Then (?) Sensible Soccer '98 came out and suddenly there were no real players names anymore, not sure about the pictures though. Does anyone know if it was due to a copyright claim from FIFA?

periheli0n 5y ago

FIFA wants a piece of the cake. A symptom of the game industry growing immensely during the last couple of years. Another symptom is the Epic vs. Apple conflict. As the amounts of money made in the sector grow almost without bounds, so does the aggressiveness of the players. Today‘s game industry is the 20th century‘s movie industry.

ksec 5y ago

You now have to paid FIFA, every single team in the European League, and Champion League for using their name, logos, colour of their shirt. etc etc. Extra money for having big name player faces for marketing on the box or graphics as well as their 3D face modelling appearing in their game. How much of that $60 you are paying actually goes to the game and not some licensing? I am not against licensing fees per se, but it is getting out of hand. You would expect they have more resources with all the success to continue to improve football / soccer games. But no, I have so much more fun with Winning Eleven / Pro Evolution Soccer in the late 90s and 00s than all the crap we have now. It is actually a lot of the same with Remasters, something about the act of making games is lost.

rambojazz 5y ago
Remasters of very old games are usually very enjoyable.
lcnmrn 5y ago
We need a street football (soccer) game and procedural generated stadiums, players, teams. OpenAI can contribute a top engine to an open source game.
- mbg721 5y ago
  I mean, those must exist. The reason EA dominates the market is part network effect and name-recognition, but mostly that they've developed really good sports games, and even with all the aggravating nonsense piled on top, nobody has really challenged them on the second part.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

eldaisfish 5y ago

All other points aside, it is truly astounding that the non-profit organisation FIFA requires billions of dollars just to license out their name to a video game. If FIFA really is a non-profit, why is there a need for all this money? Some context: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/30/fifa-profits-sepp-blatter-_n_7474808.html https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/30/fifa-profits-sep... >So where does this money go? Well last year [2014] Fifa paid out £26.1 million in salaries to its top 13 executives. >The organisation does not say how much it pays Sepp Blatter or other senior officials but "compensation is in line with major international and Swiss companies".

nyxaiur 5y ago

You have to understand that EA makes more than $1.5bn annually with a steep upwards trajectory. They are achieving this with mostly predatory micro transactions. They also have now 4 generations of game engines running the Fifa 22 games. One for the switch, one for pc and old-gen consoles and one for the new gen. If you are playing on anything else than new gen consoles you are paying 60$ for an updated xml file and some art assets players are also loosing all the progress and money spent over the last year. That said FIFA is at least as shady as EA so they can both burn to the ground.