EA Sports celebrated the return of College Football 25 this year to much acclaim and fanfare, but it’s their other tentpole sports game, FC 25, that is causing trouble for the video gaming giant.
Just weeks after it was announced that College Football 25 had become the highest selling sports video game of all-time, Electronic Arts saw a precipitous decline in their stock after revealing softer than expected numbers for its FC 25 game, the latest annual installment in their soccer franchise. For those unfamiliar, the FC games are the heir to the FIFA franchise. FIFA’s naming rights deal with EA expired after FIFA 23 and it could be that the global soccer brand could partner with someone like 2K to bring a competitor to a field in which EA has enjoyed a relative monopoly for years.
On Thursday, EA saw its biggest drop in stock price in almost two decades after a third quarter fiscal report saw FC25 and controversial microtransactions in its Ultimate Team game mode saw declines according to the Wall Street Journal.
Shares in the videogame publisher slid 16.7% Thursday in their biggest one-day drop in nearly 17 years.
That came EA after warned of a shortfall in annual net bookings, mostly due to problems with its Global Football business. That encompasses the annual soccer franchise once known as “FIFA,” as well as the linked Ultimate Team online service.
Soccer had been EA’s most reliable moneymaker. The company rebranded the FIFA franchise to “EA Sports FC” in 2023 and saw no initial slippage. But the latest iteration, which launched in September, seems to be another story.
EA said late Wednesday that its soccer franchise suffered a “slowdown as early momentum” in the quarter fizzled out. The company cut its bookings forecast for the fiscal year ending March by up to $650 million.
While College Football 25 has been incredibly popular, sales of FC 25 are the backbone of Electronic Arts’ gaming business.
What’s curious is that in the early going, FC 25 was tracking well compared to FC 24 and previous FIFA games in terms of sales and no real negative impact in moving away from the long-standing FIFA branding. The sudden drop-off shows either dissatisfaction with the game itself, or that users are spending less money in the game, specifically the Ultimate Team game mode.
Reviews for FC 25 have been meh at best. At IGN, the latest game rates a 6/10. And although issues with the game haven’t reached the troubled, viral nature of Madden, the lack of progress in the FC franchise has been underwhelming.
EA’s Ultimate Team game mode has also been the subject of controversy worldwide as lawmakers in some European countries have given close scrutiny to microtransactions on things like store packs and loot boxes, seeing them as what amounts to gambling that takes advantage of children. In 2023, FIFA Ultimate Team microtransactions produced over $2 billion in revenue for the company.
Either fans of the FC franchise are becoming discouraged by the discourse surrounding the game and not buying it, or smartening up by not spending on store packs and microtransactions when they rarely return any value for purchase. Regardless, the numbers are a wake up call to EA Sports that things need to change with its soccer franchise.
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