Electronic Arts reported it saw strong momentum across its American football platform with the return of EA Sports College Football, which drew over five million unique players into the game with an additional 500,000 playing via the EA Play trial. The game debuted on July 19.
The college football results came after the close of EA’s first fiscal quarter on June 30, but that quarter also saw huge growth with its performance on Madden NFL 24, FC Online, and FC Mobile.
For Q2 FY25 ending on September 30, EA is forecasting year-over-year growth thanks to the “historic” relaunch of the college football game, which had been dormant in part due to litigation since 2013.
“This is a monumental movement for EA Sports,” said Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, in an analyst call.
He noted EA has put more than 150 stadia in the game, and fans have created more than a million of their own teams to date.
College football players wanted to be compensated for their image use in games, and EA had resisted. After the EA agreed to settle the litigation in 2013, EA stopped making college football games.
The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in during 2021, calling the NCAA’s policy of not allowing players to be compensated illegal. The NCAA then drafted new rules, and EA began the process of restarting the game production under new licensing terms directly with more than 10,000 players, including the use of player names and faces for compensation of a free game and $600. It launched the title again on July 19, without the NCAA name and most of its prizes and trophies in the game.
For the Q2 FY25 period, EA is anticipating $1.950 billion to $2.050 billion in bookings, surpassing the consensus estimates of $1.946 billion.
Meanwhile, EA said that EA Sports FC celebrated real-world tournaments and events, attracting tens of millions of new fans and driving engagement across the franchise.
EA Sports Madden NFL delivered sustained momentum through the quarter, with weekly average users in Ultimate Team and total net bookings up double digits year-over-year. During the quarter, EA revealed Dragon Age: The Veilguard gameplay, which trended No. 1 on YouTube Gaming and received millions of views.
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