FIFA game series is more attractive than tickets and sponsors
FIFA (which is an organization) presented to the wide public their finances from 2015 to 2018. And you’ll never guess what it says! Of course, you guessed if you have read the title. But before we get to that, let’s count their money, hehe.
The revenue FIFA got for four years is kinda huge — they earned 6.42 billion dollars! And I mean not for us, peasant (who can’t even imagine such amount of money). It is mammoth for them as well. Previous four-year period FIFA made a decent buck of $5.72 billion. But these bastards raised the bar even higher this time.
By the end of 2018 FIFA’s reserves got as high as 2.74 billion dollars. Which is another crazy number — actually the best one in the history of FIFA. And 80 percent higher than the level at the end of the 2011-2014 cycle. 80 percent! Wow, these guys know what they are doing.
Selling tickets to the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia generated a 541 million dollar profit. It is 14 million more than they received from the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. How can you now doubt Russia is winning over?
The sale of TV broadcasting rights (because everyone wants to see it live and avoid any surprise the next day) summed up to $3.13 million, which is 20% more comparing to the previous time period.
But not everything in the garden is rosy. You wouldn’t expect all the numbers to be fabulous and great, would you? There are some negative tendencies that FIFA mentioned in their report. The main downside is that traditional income sources either didn’t bring more than before or even went below the previous revenue level. Can you guess which is the black sheep?
Hospitality. Tickets with additional VIP service (who being sane would buy these? Booking a ticket is not rocket science) got FIFA 148 million dollars only. In Brazil, it totaled to $184 million. Maybe in four years, people understood there is no point in such tickets?
So, should we expect FIFA’s revenue to go down?
No, not at all. Because of FIFA (the one, which is the game). Not like it’s a surprise, but it is. Cos even FIFA itself didn’t expect such a boost. In 2014 they estimated the revenue from the game as 198 million dollars. In four years. And they earned this money in 2018 only. How fucking crazy is that!
In total, from 2014 to 2018 the game brought FIFA $600 million. That includes license rights and cybersport. And that amount is freaking 9 percent of the total revenue of the organization! Expect real football to be gone to hell if FIFA (game) keeps breaking the records.
The key reason why it boosted so massively is royalty, money paid to FIFA every time somebody uses their trademark. EA (forgive me, the gaming gods for mentioning this name!) has been making FIFA games for twenty years (insert it’s-time-to-stop mem) and they pay FIFA some coin for using their brand. For FIFA 18 the federation got 160 million bucks. And EA earned more than 3 billion of evergreen money from it. And everybody’s happy. Except for the customers. Because the game sucks.
FIFA expects a lot from cybersport
No wonder, taking into account how massive the industry got in the last few years. So FIFA decided to jump into the leaving trained and get some cash here as well.
The FIFA 18 World Cup that took place in London turned out to be very successful. The final included 32 really sick players who fought for $400 thousand. Not The International prize pool, of course, but… Who am I kidding? The world’s biggest football cybersport event with four hundred thousand as the prize? Come on! Let’s hope it gets better next years. Anyway, congratulations to the winner — Saudi Arabian Mossad “MSdossary” Aldossary.
In the future, FIFA expects the game to bring more than 9% of the total revenue. But if the game will still be published by EA, I dunno, I dunno.
Also, check The 11 Best FIFA 20 Free Agents to Sign on Career Mode
