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... is now a competition for eyeballs and attention - every parent and even the parents themselves now know this.
So will this just be about money yet again (in fairness EA sports are making billions from the players), or will it be a platform to get younger fans back into the game?
This is a great article by Sam Wallace, yet again:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/03/26/fifa-video-game-ate-football/
How the FIFA video game ate football
A new generation of fans could be more interested in the game than the sport that inspired it - can football win them over?
By Sam Wallace, Chief Football Writer 26 March 2021 • 7:00am
It is the phenomenon that has become fundamental to the sport that gave it life: the hyper-reality football video game franchise FIFA, launched 28 years ago and now a significant player itself in the finance and politics of the global game.
Even aside from its own thundering commercial success, FIFA - annually updated and relaunched under the EA Sports brand - has made its presence felt in the real-world game it mimics. The latest financial results from Fifa, football's world governing body from which EA Sports licenses the game, revealed that in a pandemic-hit 2020 agreements with gaming companies were its single-highest revenue stream.
For EA Sports' parent company Electronic Arts (EA), the trajectory is largely upwards. Revenue for the last quarter of last year was up £58million from the same period in 2019 to £1.2 billion. The FIFA 21 edition is its most successful launch ever. The company says it had 35 million individual “unique” console players on FIFA 20 and 150 million playing across all formats.
The market values EA at £28billion. To put that in perspective, Manchester United, the largest publicly-quoted football club in the world, is valued at £2billion. Financially EA is a giant compared to those who dominate football but the impact of FIFA could be felt even more keenly in years to come.
Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus president and leading agent provocateur when it comes to the future of the European game, has warned that the current generation of 16 to 24-year-olds, who have grown up on FIFA, are focussed on interaction and less interested in watching the full-game real-world 90 minutes. The growth of Esports – gamers competing against one another - has been rapid. The implicit threat there is to the value of the broadcast contracts that are the financial basis of the sport itself and leads to an existential conundrum: could FIFA end up eating football itself?
'Football is playing catch-up with what motivates modern audiences''
As a technical and artistic accomplishment FIFA is an astonishing simulacrum of the elite game - from the skill Mohamed Salah might use to deceive an opponent, to his facial expression, to the style of his goal celebration. It is not hard to see the attraction although it is a bigger leap to imagine a scenario in which the avatar of Kylian Mbappe, the FIFA 21 cover star, is worth more to him one day than what he does on a pitch.
The game, which was created in EA Sports’ Vancouver studios in the early 1990s, has sold 325 million copies and is available in 21 languages. EA Sports will not discuss how much FIFA accounts for in EA’s total revenues or how much is invested in the development of each edition, but the way in which the company sees its partnership with football will be critical to those who have long-term skin in the game. In particular, like Agnelli, the owners of big European clubs.
Answering questions over email, David Jackson, a vice-president of EA Sports, says that it is a critical part to FIFA’s success that its characters are based on real-life footballers, which helps “blur the lines between the virtual and real worlds of global football” for gamers.
Jackson insists that “real world football will always be more popular, and rightly so” but what constitutes 'real world' for a generation of fans who never watch their team play in person?
The very notion of what defines a football fan is changing, Jackson says. “The manner in which the modern football fan engages with their favourite league, team or athlete bears little resemblance to the relationships of even ten years ago,” he says. “As fandom has evolved, football has had to contend with that shift and is playing a little bit of catch-up regarding what truly motivates modern audiences. If a kid growing up in Tokyo or Toronto becomes a PSG fan, it’s unlikely to be because they have visited the Parc des Princes. It’s much more likely that their favourite player plays for PSG and they grew to learn about them partly through FIFA.”
A backlash from star players
FIFA's popularity among the younger generation may be beyond doubt, but for the first time there have been rumblings of hostility towards it from within the sport. Over the years, stars have become enthusiastic players themselves - including Lionel Messi - and been eager to feature on the cover of new editions. Then in an interview with Telegraph Sport in November the agent Mino Raiola declared his intention to challenge the licensing agreements that EA Sports has with Fifa, and various leagues, for the use, in FIFA, of the intellectual property rights of his clients.
There was support on social media from Raiola client Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and later Gareth Bale, represented by Stellar Group. It is understood that EA Sports has responded and there is no current ongoing legal case.
Jackson says that global football presents a “complex and often fractured licensing landscape” compared with the relative simplicity of US sport. “No individual representative body has full authority or autonomy over everything related to league, team and athlete IP in football,” he says. He describes world football as “a little more of a ‘kit of parts’”. He will not say who gets paid what. But it is clear, from what Jackson says that EA Sports see themselves as a crucial partner “connect[ing] highly valued and famous IP with 150 million players worldwide … and that offers significant value back to our rights holders and their member clubs.”
The game has also been criticised for discouraging children from enjoying the benefits of the real thing, especially among parents struggling to limit screen-time in lockdown - an accusation that prompts a forthright response from Jackson. “The reality is that for a person living without access to wide open spaces or the means to connect with a community through physical play (like for example, in a lockdown environment), games like FIFA can help people exhibit their fandom in a very productive and mentally stimulating way.
“It’s a pretty condescending and privileged view to take that kids should be outside playing. What if they can’t? What if their environment is unsafe in enabling that? When people ask whether I’d prefer my kids to be playing football or FIFA the honest answer is both, as the physical and mental exercise of understanding and ultimately falling in love with football is hugely valuable.”
Part II below:
So will this just be about money yet again (in fairness EA sports are making billions from the players), or will it be a platform to get younger fans back into the game?
This is a great article by Sam Wallace, yet again:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/03/26/fifa-video-game-ate-football/
How the FIFA video game ate football
A new generation of fans could be more interested in the game than the sport that inspired it - can football win them over?
By Sam Wallace, Chief Football Writer 26 March 2021 • 7:00am
It is the phenomenon that has become fundamental to the sport that gave it life: the hyper-reality football video game franchise FIFA, launched 28 years ago and now a significant player itself in the finance and politics of the global game.
Even aside from its own thundering commercial success, FIFA - annually updated and relaunched under the EA Sports brand - has made its presence felt in the real-world game it mimics. The latest financial results from Fifa, football's world governing body from which EA Sports licenses the game, revealed that in a pandemic-hit 2020 agreements with gaming companies were its single-highest revenue stream.
For EA Sports' parent company Electronic Arts (EA), the trajectory is largely upwards. Revenue for the last quarter of last year was up £58million from the same period in 2019 to £1.2 billion. The FIFA 21 edition is its most successful launch ever. The company says it had 35 million individual “unique” console players on FIFA 20 and 150 million playing across all formats.
The market values EA at £28billion. To put that in perspective, Manchester United, the largest publicly-quoted football club in the world, is valued at £2billion. Financially EA is a giant compared to those who dominate football but the impact of FIFA could be felt even more keenly in years to come.
Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus president and leading agent provocateur when it comes to the future of the European game, has warned that the current generation of 16 to 24-year-olds, who have grown up on FIFA, are focussed on interaction and less interested in watching the full-game real-world 90 minutes. The growth of Esports – gamers competing against one another - has been rapid. The implicit threat there is to the value of the broadcast contracts that are the financial basis of the sport itself and leads to an existential conundrum: could FIFA end up eating football itself?
'Football is playing catch-up with what motivates modern audiences''
As a technical and artistic accomplishment FIFA is an astonishing simulacrum of the elite game - from the skill Mohamed Salah might use to deceive an opponent, to his facial expression, to the style of his goal celebration. It is not hard to see the attraction although it is a bigger leap to imagine a scenario in which the avatar of Kylian Mbappe, the FIFA 21 cover star, is worth more to him one day than what he does on a pitch.
The game, which was created in EA Sports’ Vancouver studios in the early 1990s, has sold 325 million copies and is available in 21 languages. EA Sports will not discuss how much FIFA accounts for in EA’s total revenues or how much is invested in the development of each edition, but the way in which the company sees its partnership with football will be critical to those who have long-term skin in the game. In particular, like Agnelli, the owners of big European clubs.
Answering questions over email, David Jackson, a vice-president of EA Sports, says that it is a critical part to FIFA’s success that its characters are based on real-life footballers, which helps “blur the lines between the virtual and real worlds of global football” for gamers.
Jackson insists that “real world football will always be more popular, and rightly so” but what constitutes 'real world' for a generation of fans who never watch their team play in person?
The very notion of what defines a football fan is changing, Jackson says. “The manner in which the modern football fan engages with their favourite league, team or athlete bears little resemblance to the relationships of even ten years ago,” he says. “As fandom has evolved, football has had to contend with that shift and is playing a little bit of catch-up regarding what truly motivates modern audiences. If a kid growing up in Tokyo or Toronto becomes a PSG fan, it’s unlikely to be because they have visited the Parc des Princes. It’s much more likely that their favourite player plays for PSG and they grew to learn about them partly through FIFA.”
A backlash from star players
FIFA's popularity among the younger generation may be beyond doubt, but for the first time there have been rumblings of hostility towards it from within the sport. Over the years, stars have become enthusiastic players themselves - including Lionel Messi - and been eager to feature on the cover of new editions. Then in an interview with Telegraph Sport in November the agent Mino Raiola declared his intention to challenge the licensing agreements that EA Sports has with Fifa, and various leagues, for the use, in FIFA, of the intellectual property rights of his clients.
There was support on social media from Raiola client Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and later Gareth Bale, represented by Stellar Group. It is understood that EA Sports has responded and there is no current ongoing legal case.
Jackson says that global football presents a “complex and often fractured licensing landscape” compared with the relative simplicity of US sport. “No individual representative body has full authority or autonomy over everything related to league, team and athlete IP in football,” he says. He describes world football as “a little more of a ‘kit of parts’”. He will not say who gets paid what. But it is clear, from what Jackson says that EA Sports see themselves as a crucial partner “connect[ing] highly valued and famous IP with 150 million players worldwide … and that offers significant value back to our rights holders and their member clubs.”
The game has also been criticised for discouraging children from enjoying the benefits of the real thing, especially among parents struggling to limit screen-time in lockdown - an accusation that prompts a forthright response from Jackson. “The reality is that for a person living without access to wide open spaces or the means to connect with a community through physical play (like for example, in a lockdown environment), games like FIFA can help people exhibit their fandom in a very productive and mentally stimulating way.
“It’s a pretty condescending and privileged view to take that kids should be outside playing. What if they can’t? What if their environment is unsafe in enabling that? When people ask whether I’d prefer my kids to be playing football or FIFA the honest answer is both, as the physical and mental exercise of understanding and ultimately falling in love with football is hugely valuable.”
Part II below:
