The license agreement between the English Premier League (EPL) by EA Sports is almost final, with a contract value of £488 million. Wow!
The contract will last six years and the value is almost double compared to the previous EPL contract. Reported by Sky Sports, each EPL club is expected to get 80 million pounds from the contract.
Meanwhile, EA will maintain the license to use teams such as Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool. The clubs are said to have received an announcement regarding the six-year agreement with EA Sports.
EA and EPL are said to have cooperated commercially since 1998. Meanwhile, EA, through its FIFA game series, has been the main partner of the EPL since 2016.
EA should be relieved to be able to retain its EPL licence, as they recently lost their right to use the FIFA name, as FIFA is said to have demanded fees for licenses that were too large, reaching USD 1 billion.
As a result, EA had to change the name of the flagship game that had been used for almost 30 years to EA Sports FC. But EA can maintain licenses with hundreds of teams and players, including more than 30 football leagues around the world. So even if the name changes, the list of licensed players and clubs in the game will remain complete.
This is in contrast to Konami's eFootball game series, formerly known as Pro Evolution Soccer, which only had licenses for a handful of clubs, namely Barcelona, Manchester United and Inter Milan.
However, the FIFA game series is not without criticism, because they are considered to be too focused on the Ultimate Team (FUT) game mode, which is their main source of income from microtransactions.