EA Close To Signing GBP488 Million Deal With EPL

Last year, Electronic Arts announced that it won’t be renewing its license with FIFA, and that its football game series will be renamed EA Sports FC. To that end, the publisher is reportedly close to signing a commercial deal with the English Premier League to remain its lead partner and official video game license holder.

Sky News reports that the six-year deal will be worth GBP488 million (~RM2.56 billion). The report also says that this “lucrative extension is said to be worth more than double the existing deal”. The 20 Premier League clubs have also been notified of the likely signing between the two.

While the Sky News report does not mention what the partnership entails exactly, according to VGC this means that EA will be the sponsor for “several elements of match day experience”. This includes having the EA Sports logo appearing of the jerseys of referees. As for the football video games, this means the continued integration of Premier League-backed players in the Ultimate Team mode, a major cash cow for the company.

The latter report also notes that this deal with the Premier League could be similar to the one signed between EA and the Spanish football league, La Liga. This deal included title naming rights, logos, graphics, fonts and “other visual elements”, in what is labelled as a “complete rebrand”. This particular deal is reportedly worth EUR30 million (~RM139.5 million) for the 2023/2024 season.

The first iteration of EA Sports FC, which will be officially be named EA FC 24, will be released later this year. It will be the first game to adopt this new naming convention, after nearly 30 years of FIFA. Despite the name change, it is expected to be pretty much the same game as the other entries of the series have been, including the Ultimate Team mode.

(Source: Sky News, VGC)

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