RIP FIFA: EA trademark EA Sports FC
Last week, EA announced that it might have had enough of the money paid to FIFA, the governing body of the football world, in the kind of casual way that only large corporations can do, in order to call its game FIFA. “Looking forward, we are also exploring the idea of renaming our global EA SPORTS football game,” Cam Weber, general manager of EA Sports Group Wrote in a blog post“This means that we are reviewing our naming rights agreement with FIFA, which is separate from all our other official partnerships and licenses throughout the football world.”
Sure enough today there is news (Thanks polygon) EA has applied for a new European trademark for something called EA Sports FC. These are the “computer game software” submitted to the UK Intellectual Property Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office on October 1.
The FIFA brand has always been very different from the large number of other licenses included in the game. Past EA executives, such as Peter Moore, have argued that with the success of the series, EA’s work for FIFA’s image can Said to do more than FIFA itself. It also complements other initiatives taken by EA, such as relaunching the PGA Tour and changing its name to EA Sports PGA Tour.
So it looks like FIFA 22 will be the last in the series to be released under that name: maybe. There are other reasons to consider the name change: FIFA is big, but it may also be an opportunity to get rid of controversial areas, such as FUT and its player packs, which some people see as the epitome of unethical monetization. EA said that children should not spend money on them, and it is clearly working to solve it, but with the close attention of various regulatory agencies, maybe a fresh start may help to see the text on the wall.