Over three decades, the Electronic Arts (EA) built its soccer video game into a $2 billion annual franchise, and it had one name: FIFA. That ended last year after a financial dispute with the global sport’s governing body, and the game was rebranded EA Sports FC.
The FC stands for football club, and the company took that designation seriously with a brand positioning that leaned into the idea that players should feel like members of a new football club and not just a video game customer. Created with agency Uncommon, its “Welcome to the Club” campaign launched in April 2023, attempting to get fans of all the world’s football club’s to feel a collective sense of ownership around their favorite game.
The fan-centric perspective across live events and other content helped drive 14.5 million active player accounts in its first 24 days, compared with FIFA 2023′s initial numbers of 10.3 million, and propel the game into the Top 10 sales for 2023, despite launching in September.
Now, as FC 2025 launches, the brand and agency are faced with the challenge of following up a hit; not only keeping the club vibes going, but building on the success of last year.
“In year one of FC, we asked fans to ‘Join the club’, and we felt that as we entered our second year we needed to continue to reflect the passion of football fans globally in a meaningful way,” says Charlie Villiers, EA Sports FC’s senior director of franchise marketing. “We wanted to create a stronger connection to FC, allowing more fans to feel part of something, and to better represent their emotions and feelings towards their favourite club.”
“For The Club”
One way to do that is through content. EAFC (and formerly FIFA) has long gone beyond its game status to become a full-fledged cultural institution. Not only are fans playing as their favorite stars, the stars themselves are just as obsessed.
The new extended trailer film, “For The Club” is packed with both. From the game’s coverboy Jude Bellingham—getting taunted by his brother Jobe—and icons like David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Gianluigi Buffon, to Ballon d’Or Féminin winner Aitana Bonmatí and Liverpool star Trent Alexander-Arnold. Then there’s F1 World Champion Max Verstappen, and music artists Dave and Tiakola.
There’s a long tradition in football advertising revolving around bringing fans and stars closer together. Like in 2016, when Nike put a regular kid in the big time for the wonderful body swap story, “The Switch.” Or Adidas pretending for World Cup 2022 that stars like Bellingham, Karim Benzema, and Messi all live under the same roof. The big names are mingled in with everyday players, showing the trash-talk, the obsession, the laughs, and the blisters involved with being a FC superfan. The message? They’re all in the same club.
Uncommon co-founder, Nils Leonard, says one important thing to remember in any rebrand is that it’s never really over. “Building a brand like FC isn’t a one and done, it’s a constant, living and breathing task where you look to establish new icons and behaviors in the entire experience of the brand,” says Leonard. “It’s also about giving the new energy and experience of the brand some depth, this work enriches the new FC brand with the real love and sacrifice of fans around the world.”
More to come
In addition to the main trailer, EA Sports will roll out a series of talent shorts and thematic chapters, further exploring the essence of what it means to put it all on the line “For The Club.”
The extended trailer isn’t a one-and-done of content revolving around this gaming “club.” The brand will be gradually rolling out a series of shorts and chapters, around certain fans, players and stories hinted at in the trailer.
“As we built out the strategy for FC 25, we looked at how the landscape has evolved—what is working, what needs changing and how the way fans engage with football has shifted,” says Villiers. “Building on this, we wanted to create an additional dimension to the work this year. This allowed our teams to tell multiple stories in enough detail, and then to be more intentional and relevant as we roll them out across the various platforms our fans engage with.”