A few hours ago it was announced an agreement between EA Sports and La Liga de España so that the company that today develops the games of FIFA become the main sponsor of the National Championship of the First Division Football League of said country. All this occurs a few months after EA Sports decided not to renew the contract it had with FIFA for image rights.
As announced by La Liga official websiteAs of the 2023/2024 season, the official sponsor of the championship will no longer be Banco Santander but EA Sports FC. This will involve a change of image, as well as logos and other graphic pieces. Also, will bring name changes for the First Division, the Second Division, the eLaLiga and LaLiga Promises (the youth tournament).
What does EA Sports’ sponsorship of La Liga entail?
Let’s remember that one of EA’s main discomforts regarding FIFA was that there was no reason to continue with the name of the football organization. Its own CEO, Andrew Wilson, pointed out that “the FIFA brand has much more meaning as a video game than as a football governing body.” Following these thoughts, EA Sports finally decided not to renew image rights contract with FIFA. With this, he changed the image of his football game for 2023/2024.
Beyond talking about fame, the company pointed out that it was prevented from doing new things with its soccer games by FIFA. Basically they could not include new business partners or experiment with variations of football other than the typical eleven against eleven. This point is fundamental and must be closely related to this paragraph shared by LaLiga:
«(…) fans will enjoy the technological innovations, the improvements and the development of the game, and the most outstanding contents of real football. Both La Liga and EA Sports are committed to grassroots football initiatives to grow this sport, promoting national and international sports projects, improving facilities and making football more accessible to young people.”
This could imply many things. However, it is clear that they want to do a very close job between the entertainment that LaLiga can offer and the technological possibilities of the EA team. Given this, It would not be strange to think of not only seeing the company’s image in official matches, but also seeing official matches (or at least their news or highlights) in EA Sports FCthe new soccer game.
It could also be interpreted that there would be no problems getting licenses from LaLiga teams. However, EA Sports had previously clarified that it would have more than 700 teams in its new game. However, it remains to be seen how this will become a reality in the future.
Fuente: LaLiga
