EA has announced the most meaningful change to their football game since they had dropped the FIFA license; signing up the UEFA license.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, EA Sports FC 24 will get the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament next year, across all platforms. It will be a free addition for Summer 2024.
UEFA marketing director Guy-Laurent Epstein shared this statement about the coming collaboration:
“We are delighted to further expand our partnership with EA Sports, with UEFA Euro 2024 becoming a part of the EA Sports FC game.
UEFA Euro 2024 is one of the world’s most vibrant and exciting football tournaments, and we’re thrilled that the huge EA Sports FC 24 community across the globe will get the chance to engage with the tournament in such an authentic gaming environment.”
EA will also be giving away free Ultimate Team packs to every EA Sports FC 24 player who gets the game before January 6, 2024. In fact, distribution of these items begins far before that, on December 18, 2023.
Players can potentially get one of these Ultimate Team packs:
- Jack Grealish (England)
- Ousmane Dembélé (France)
- Federico Chiesa (Italy)
- Florian Wirtz (Germany)
- Virgil Van Djik (Netherlands)
- Alvaro Morata (Spain)
EA did used to have a very good thing going with FIFA for many years. FIFA was a big enough association to run enough tournaments to keep players playing for a significant part of the year.
But when EA justifiably ended their partnership with FIFA, they made a very magnanimous and smart decision. By adding not one, but several football associations, including all women’s football leagues, EA expanded exponentially on the amount of players and tournaments that they can feature in the game.
So EA may eventually find themselves in the position where they are representing several tournaments and competitions in EA Sports FC at the same time. That gives fans more choices on what to play based on which teams and tournaments they follow.
It also increases the amount of players they can add in for Ultimate Team. So obviously, EA has a profit incentive to do all this, but it is also a significant investment on their part to sort all these teams and associations out. So EA does deserve credit to not have made the game, for example, just UEFA 24.
Football fans can certainly look forward to even more teams and associations to join EA Sports FC 24 in the coming months.
