With just months to go before FIFA officially rebrands to EA Sports FC, Electronic Arts is set to retain control of a key piece of the franchise. Reports out of the United Kingdom suggest that EA will keep its relationship with the Premier League, thanks to a lucrative extension.
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Per Sky News in the U.K., Premier League teams on February 10 were briefed regarding an extension between the top football association and Electronic Arts. The new deal will reportedly pay the Premier League and its member clubs £488m over the next six years. The new EA/Premier League agreement will keep the video game publisher as the lead sponsor of the league, and retain exclusivity.
This latest extension will keep the relationship between Electronic Arts and the Premier League going for at least another six years. The two parties have been connected via the FIFA franchise since 1998.
Retaining the Premier League branding and the member teams’ names, players, and logos is a priority for EA, given that those properties help move copies of the successful football franchise. These types of deals will be even more interesting to watch going forward, given that the publisher/developer has opted to ditch the FIFA branding in turn for an in-house name in EA Sports FC.
It’s still too unclear as to whether the loss of the FIFA license will have any effect on the sales of subsequent games of the franchise, but moves like this help keep EA’s supremacy in the simulation football game world. EA’s only competition is Konami’s eFootball (formerly known as PES), which only has a handful of notable team name brands.
