there’ s an in-game structure present that helps young and emerging talents to prove themselves in regular tournaments organised by EA, something that had been missing for too long. FIFA always had a massive playerbase, but without the structures put in place, it’ s eSports endeavours were doomed. This is about to change.
Additionally, the eSports community within FIFA is growing rapidly: Big football teams like Schalke, Wolfsburg, Paris-Saint-German, Lissabon, WestHam United and more have announced their FIFA rosters, and with fresh new teams like Hashtag United, FIFA’ s future looks really bright. FIFA is probably the one game that is easiest to learn out of all eSports, due to everyone interested in it having at least a little but of background on football. Sports teams in particular can massively capitalise on this, as they can encourage their fans that support their regular football club( and probably play FIFA), to also support their respective eSports team. With this fan support, viewership numbers are bound to explode, which then causes more industry interest in the scene, starting a chain reaction. Due to this, FIFA will emerge as the biggest sports franchise within eSports, and as one of the five most popular eSport disciplines in the foreseeable future- mark my words. Now, there is an elephant in the way of FIFA emerging as a popular eSport: Pay to Win. FIFA’ s most popular game mode, Ultimate Team, relies on players opening packs for real money. There is a way to form a decent team without spending any money, but getting a Ronaldo or Messi to play for your club without spending any money, is virtually impossible. A player like Ronaldo is worth more than a million coins, you get 400 coins per match, up to 10,000 if you win the highest division title. The squads professional players use are worth upwards of 10,000,000 coins. You do the math. Professional players are expected to spend somewhere in the range of 500-700 € in order to form a squad to compete with. Of course, if you’ re under a contract with a professional team, they might finance this for you. As a semi-professional player? Best of luck succeeding without spending that amount of money. You’ re gonna need it.
Overall, FIFA’ s future as an eSport looks brighter than ever before. The fact that it’ s a game that everyone already knows, is a huge advantage for finding new fans. If EA is able to introduce more tournaments, and an overall easier to compete in environment, we’ re going to see a lot of teams following suit very quickly.