Every year, interest in FIFA gradually declines after the turn of the year. FIFA 22 is no exception, but a look at past years shows a larger trend – which is also going downhill.
Established brand, millions of players for years, almost a monopoly on the market of football simulations: FIFA is an absolute flagship of the publisher EA SPORTS in the sports segment. Not least because competitor Konami has given itself a leg up so far this year with the retread of its only major alternative, eFootball (formerly Pro Evolution Soccer).
Streamers looking for variety
But behind the sales and profits maximised by promos in modes like Ultimate Team, the facade seems to be crumbling: More and more streamers are turning away from the franchise.
Because big names of the FIFA scene like ‘Gamerbrother’ or ‘Tisi Schubech’ are regularly drawn to other games in their streams. Currently, for example, in F1 2022, in which ‘Gamerbrother’ already organised a “streamer world championship”. At the same time, other established greats such as ‘Der Keller’ help themselves to pack openings in real life and open Panini, Topps or Pokemon sets in their streams – or, like ‘EliasN97’, even turn their backs on the game completely.
Loss of interest of the viewers?
The reason for this development was already given by ‘Tisi Schubech’ themselves several months ago: In a stream at the end of October – not even four weeks after the release of FIFA 22 – the two people from Grünstadt wanted to have recognised a declining interest on the part of the viewers. This was evident across different platforms and creators, they said at the time.
YouTube views are plummeting
And indeed: A look at the views of the first YouTube videos after the release of this year’s offshoot and previous releases of the FIFA series supports this assumption. Not only with the “Tisis”, as they are called by viewers, did the clicks drop noticeably over the last two years.
Other big YouTubers like the names already mentioned or ‘Feel Fifa’ and ‘FIFA Goals United’ also lost a lot of views compared to FIFA 21 and especially FIFA 20, the most clicked part of the last years – sometimes even in the six-digit range.
For example, two pack openings by YouTuber and streamer ‘Der Keller’: While the drawn Lionel Messi brought him almost 200,000 clicks on YouTube after the release of FIFA 21, after the release of FIFA 22 at the end of last year it was only 100,000.
Twitch less affected
The same can also be confirmed in part with regard to the streaming platform Twitch: While the peak number of simultaneously active viewers according to Twitch Tracker went up significantly from around 365,000 to 841,000 from FIFA 20 to FIFA 21, it dropped to 787,000 this year.
The number of streamers active at the same time in the game developed identically: From 5008 channels during FIFA 20 to 7704 in FIFA 21 and 6280 in FIFA 22.
Sales figures remain stable
The sales figures of the game, however, speak a different language: According to “Games Wirtschaft” FIFA 20 sold more than 1.5 million copies on the German market alone. A record that FIFA 21 even surpassed with over two million sales. And FIFA 22 also got off to its usual strong start and was one of only three games released in 2021 to sell over 500,000 copies by the end of the year.
So while the fanbase’s interest in passively consuming the game actually seems to be waning somewhat overall, the number of buyers remains stable. So the hype around EA SPORTS’ flagship game itself is unlikely to die down just like that. The hype about content for the series, however, probably will.