With EA hinting that it may change the name of its football games, 2K is being coy about whether it will acquire the FIFA licence instead.
It still seems unbelievable that either EA or FIFA would want to break up their long-running association but both organisations have made it clear that that’s very likely to happen, with EA already trademarking the name EA Sports FC and FIFA hinting that it wants to make multiple new games with rival publishers.
Who exactly those rivals would be has never been stated publicly but clearly 2K are one of the front-runners, considering their success with sports titles such as the NBA 2K series, PGA Tour 2K, and WWE 2K (so no prizes for guessing their football game would be called FIFA 2K23 and so on).
That’s a fact not lost on 2K investors, who point blank asked 2K boss Strauss Zelnick whether he was interested and his answer was… suspiciously non-committal.
Zelnick initially tried to avoid the question by talking about mobile game Top Eleven, a relatively obscure title that nevertheless led to 2K buying developer Nordeus.
‘We are so thrilled to have Nordeus in the Take-Two family,’ Zelnick told investors during an earnings call, as transcribed by VGC. ‘They’re just crushing it and Top Eleven is a great, beloved title. I just couldn’t be happier to be in the soccer manager business through Top Eleven with the Nordeus team.’
When pressed about the possibility of acquiring the FIFA licence he then added: ‘That’s a big step forward for us… we haven’t been in that sport before. And erm, I think I’ll leave it at that today.’
That’s obviously not an official confirmation of anything but unless Zelnick is a troll it heavily implies that 2K has already talked to FIFA. Although, given how open FIFA has been about working with other publishers it would be highly surprising if they hadn’t.
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The dispute supposedly centres around FIFA’s attempts to more than double what EA pays it for its name, while also limiting the ways in which they can use it. EA would not lose the rights to use real club and player names if they lost the FIFA licence, but they would lose the official World Cup rights.
It’s still possible that there could be an amicable solution, and that both companies are just posturing at the moment, but it really does seem as if the FIFA name will soon no longer be EA’s to use.
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