EA signs deals with Spurs
Three year deal with UK football club for FIFA publisher
EA has signed a three year deal with London football club Tottenham Hotspur, making EA Sports the official video Game partner of the English Premier League.
"Over the course of the past few years we've seen the international profile of the club rise significantly, especially across key markets in Asia and North America," said chairman of the football club Daniel Levy.
"We are delighted to have the opportunity to partner with EA Sports, one of the world's leading entertainment brands, and provide them with the opportunity to reach our global fan base."
The deal will see Spurs players digitally scanned for future FIFA titles, new initiatives aimed at the club's fans, and an EA Sports station set up at the team's home ground for fans to get hands on with games. Spurs will also take part in a three match pre-season tour later this month, and compete with LA Galaxy and New York Red Bulls.
"We are extremely excited to join a world class football club like Tottenham Hotspur as an Official Club Partner," added Matt Bilbey, SVP and GM of Football at EA Sports.
"This is an opportunity for us to create a deeper connection with their passionate, global fan base, and use our game as a platform to engage Spurs supporters all season long."
EA Sports already has partnership deals with Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Newcastle, and Manchester City.
I will be very interesting to see how this pans out.
Soccer in the UK is fiercely tribal, so for instance getting backing from Everton will reduce sales to Liverpool supporters.
So EA, if they get it wrong, could be paying for a reduction in sales.
We tried this at Codemasters with club football and signed up many major soccer clubs in Europe complete with image rights to their players etc etc. At a cost of many millions we signed up Manchester United, Liverpool, Juventus, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, Arsenal, Ajax, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Leeds, Glasgow Rangers, Celtic, Borussia Dortmund, Aston Villa and Hamburg.Then we made a separate game for each club, with all sorts of team specific content. And it failed miserably. Partly because the game wasn't very good. But partly because the marketing task was impossible.
Each game was intended for a different fanbase so we needed to market each individually into that fanbase. It would have needed 17 marketing teams and 17 marketing budgets. And all the money had been spent on the licenses.
Posted:9 months ago