[Bayart]

> Force players to choose between FI-FI-FA legacy league and the new hotness.

FIFA has the approval of nation-states and there's massive cultural capital invested in FIFA, especially regarding the World Cup. Nobody's leaving it, especially not players. FIFA also doesn't have leagues of its own.

> 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.

EA is chump change compared to world football. They've got no leverage, and despite the dislike for FIFA everywhere, a power struggle between the two with EA casting itself as the righteous party will only invite backlash.

[pg_bot]

> EA is chump change compared to world football. They've got no leverage, and despite the dislike for FIFA everywhere, a power struggle between the two with EA casting itself as the righteous party will only invite backlash.

You sure about that? EA's revenue for the last fiscal year was 5.6 billion dollars. FIFA's revenue for the last 4 years is about equal to that dollar amount. There's a lot more money in video games than people think.

[Bayart]

I'm not talking about revenue. Football isn't really an industry, and it's not rational. If you want to compare the cultural and social footprint of football to something it's video games as a whole, not EA on its lonesome.

[pg_bot]

I mean you could probably supplant the entire FIFA organization with $10B if you wanted to take a really big swing. Money talks and if you funnel the right amount of money to the best players you will create the best sports league.

[owenmarshall]

The biggest clubs in the world tried this several months ago - the $3.2 billion European Super League didn’t even last a week before it fell apart.

FIFA survives because it effectively sanctions competitions at every level. Take Manchester United: they play in the English Premier League. That competition is sanctioned by the English FA - a member of UEFA, the European body of FIFA. If United make it into European competition, they play in a competition organized by UEFA. Their players represent their national teams all over the world, and compete in matches run by UEFA, CONMEBOL, and other FIFA governing bodies.

When Manchester United announced they were joining the Super League in lieu of the UEFA sanctioned European competitions, the FA announced that they were at risk of expulsion from the English league structure because the FA bylaws say you can only play matches sanctioned by FIFA/UEFA - essentially pulling the league and cup competitions away from them and turning them into a glorified exhibition team. And the fans went ballistic at this, for good reason.

Was the ESL a trial balloon? Almost certainly, and we will see something similar, possibly to just force UEFAs hand in negotiating things like revenue sharing. But supplanting FIFA would be much harder than “throwing money at the problem”.

[Bayart]

Those players would be excluding themselves from all known international football and from transferring to and fro all current clubs and leagues on earth. That would be _complete suicide_. They'd become nobodies overnight.

10B probably isn't even enough to buy out the PL, much less the world football pyramid.

[mikepurvis]

But how much of EA's revenue is from nonsense like microtransactions and loot boxes included in full price AAA games? Ultimate Team (the card trading meta-game) is $1.6B alone: https://boardroom.tv/ea-sports-fifa-ultimate-team-madden-nhl...

So yeah, it's a lot of money today, but at least that part of it is a revenue stream that IMO is vulnerable on a number of fronts, including regulatory issues, changing consumer sentiment, platform crackdowns, etc. It's a lot of eggs in one basket for EA, vs FIFA which is a household name for which much of the revenue should be extremely "safe".

[raverbashing]

Monetary size doesn't matter in this case. In the least

Do you think, in a (more moral than financial) dispute between EA and NBA who would win? It's like that but x10

Most people don't even know who EA is, they just want to play FIFA.

[vasco]

Pretty much every kid that has ever played FIFA knows and repeats the "EA sports - it's in the game" blurb so I'm pretty sure everyone is aware of EA.

[siva7]

Sure, but besides some geeks no one cares if the next FIFA is from EA or Epic. That’s the problem EA has

[siva7]

See it this way. If FIFA decides to award the License to another Publisher, then also other license givers will award them to the new publisher instead of EA. No football executive cares much about the relationship with a gaming studio but for sure about their goodstanding within the corrupt FIFA system.