EA SPORTS has revealed its eSports plans for FC 24 – and caused further incomprehension. The dream of the World Cup will be over in just a few weeks for 99.9 per cent of all players without a club
“I don’t think you need a doctorate any more to understand the system,” David Jackson – vice president EA SPORTS FC – had claimed to eSport as recently as July. Some two months later, the picture is different. An enormously sobering one for eSports players without clubs and organisations.
The developer has revealed its plans for eSports in FC 24 in more detail – and in doing so, it has focused on numbers: More than 50,000 players are to compete in the competitive ecosystem “FC Pro” for a total of one million US dollars in prize money. The publisher makes no secret of the fact that only 20 of these players will take part in the FC Pro Open. But let’s take it one step at a time.
Leipzig duo receives wildcards
The kick-off will of course be in Football Ultimate Team (FUT) – more precisely in Rivals. There, ambitious FC 24 gamers have to reach Division 4 by 14 October to unlock the competitive game mode. This will be followed by an invitation to the FC Pro Open Ladder, which will be geographically divided into ten regions. Who reaches the FC Pro Open Regional Qualifiers from here will be decided by the peak ratings during the period. In Europe East and Europe West, the 256 best players will make this jump.
The FC Pro Open Regional Qualifiers will take place for the European regions on 21 and 22 October. Worldwide, a total of 52 eSports players will qualify for the FC Pro Open Global Qualifier via the Regionals. The pool of players with World Championship chances – outside the league systems – is therefore already extremely thin by mid-October. The 52 qualifiers are joined by twelve players with wildcards – among them the two Leipzig players Umut ‘RBLZ_Umut’ Gültekin and Anders ‘RBLZ_Vejrgang’ Vejrgang.
More than two months with only 20 players
Through the FC Pro Open Global Qualifier, 16 participants in the FC Pro Open are finally determined – but they still do not have a World Cup ticket guaranteed. They will compete with each other and with four automatically qualified players for the trip to the FC Pro World Championship in June 2024. The quartet with a free ticket are the semi-finalists of the FIFAe World Cup 2023: World Champion Manuel ‘ManuBachoore’ Bachoore, Mark ‘Mark11’ Zakhary, Francesco ‘Obrun2002’ Tagliafierro and Paulo ‘PHzin’ Henrique Chaves.
These 20 eSportsmen will compete against each other on a weekly basis from the end of November until the end of January. The rest of the 50,000 touted by EA SPORTS can only watch. But that’s not quite right: those who don’t make it into the FC Pro Open can spend the rest of the season in FC Pro Open Regional Cups. Qualification for these is via the FC Pro Open Ladder, which will be reopened. The Regional Cups promise monthly prize money – in Europe even 10,000 US dollars for the winners. But there are no opportunities to jump on the World Cup bandwagon.
The FC Pro Open Championship will finally decide on 4 February which four players will be allowed to travel to the FC Pro World Championship. But by then, only 20 of 50,000 candidates outside of league and club players have been in the pool for more than two months anyway. From Rivals to FC Pro Open Ladder, FC Pro Open Regional Qualifiers, FC Pro Open Global Qualifiers, FC Pro Open and FC Pro Open Championship to the World Cup – with different formats at the different levels. What was that about the PhD?
The comments on the announcement of the account ‘EA SPORTS FC Pro’ are accordingly partly critical. Italian eSportsman Francesco ‘Hartixel’ Ricci from the organisation Mkers asks the crucial question: “Are you trying to tell me that my competitive season is already over in October if I only finish 13th in Europe East?” He hopes to have “misunderstood” something.
But the answer is actually “yes”: the Deep Dive article makes exactly that scenario clear. At least if the FC Pro World Championship is targeted.
“Did you just bury competitive FIFA? It looks like it’s almost impossible to qualify,” says content creator ‘Bramsl’ in the direction of EA SPORTS. Brazilian Paulo Neto also wondered about the selection criteria for the twelve wildcards of the FC Pro Global Qualifier. After all, he had won both the eMLS and the eNations Cup in FIFA 23, and had also qualified for all three FIFAe Finals: “What should I do to be invited? Change nationality? “