EA Sports 'Exploring' Renaming 'FIFA' Series as It Reviews Naming Rights Agreement

EA Sports announced Thursday it's "exploring the idea of renaming" its future football video games following the release of FIFA 22 last week.

Cam Weber, the company's general manager, explained the naming rights agreement with FIFA is separate from those with regional confederations, domestic leagues and continental tournaments, so the game's depth wouldn't be impacted by a possible name change:

"The breadth of our partnerships and our ecosystem of licensed content will enable us to continue to bring unrivaled authenticity in our EA Sports football games, now and for many years to come."

"As we look ahead, we're also exploring the idea of renaming our global EA Sports football games. This means we're reviewing our naming rights agreement with FIFA, which is separate from all our other official partnerships and licenses across the football world."

The FIFA franchise has become a behemoth for EA, and that's continued since the release of FIFA 22 with Thursday's statement noting 9.1 million gamers have already played the new version.

Matt Slater of The Athletic reported the hallmark football series, which began in 1993 as FIFA International Soccer, now generates an estimated $2 billion of EA Sports' $5.6 billion in annual revenue.

FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) is a major part of that success as it has allowed the video game to generate significant revenue beyond people simply buying the game with a variety of microtransactions.

Slater noted FIFA, the sport's governing body that generates 60 percent of its income from naming rights agreements, took note of the game's success in a recent account statement.

"In contrast to the many economic sectors that were drastically affected by COVID-19, the video game industry proved far more resilient to the pandemic," the statement read.

In turn, the value of all the video game's licensing deals is on the rise as organizations become more in tune with the revenue it brings in.

Garry Crawford, a University of Salford professor who specialized in video game culture, told Slater that EA was able to land terrific deals early in the FIFA series:

"It seems remarkable how easily EA got FIFA's name on the game but we forget what the football industry was like in the mid-'90s. It was miles behind American sports in terms of commercialization. When EA turned up and started asking for the rights to stadiums, kits and players, football had no idea what they had or how much to charge. EA already had experience of that from its NFL, NHL and NBA games."

Now EA is at least exploring the idea of losing the FIFA branding and trying to stand on its own, which would include a likely rebrand of FUT.

Talk of change comes after the game formerly known as Pro Evolution Soccer, one of the few competitors on the market, rebranded to eFootball for the release of eFootball 2022. The game has received mostly negative reviews following the switch.

EA Sports has a far stronger foundation to stand on, but dropping the longstanding FIFA name wouldn't come without risk for the multibillion dollar franchise.