FIFA shifts to multi-partner digital football strategy

FIFA has published an updated long-term Digital Football Strategy designed to connect partners and platforms across gaming and esports, moving the organisation from a single-partner model to what it describes as a structured, multi-partner ecosystem.The strategy is intended to broaden FIFA’s reach across multiple gaming genres, platforms and audiences, while creating new participation pathways from hyper-casual formats to competitive play linked to FIFA’s competitions and Member Associations.FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström said: “By establishing a scalable foundation in gaming and esports, we’re creating new opportunities for our 211 Member Associations and our Commercial Partners to participate and collaborate, which in turn will provide fans with greater options to engage with football.“Our ambition is to build a sustainable and adaptable ecosystem that reflects how football is experienced today and how it’ll continue to evolve in the future.”FIFA said its current digital football portfolio already includes partnerships with Roblox, Epic Games, Konami, SEGA and Sports Interactive, Gamefam, Mythical Games and Solace Games, with the intention of reaching distinct audiences across different formats.The governing body positioned the new approach as an operating model shift, with FIFA acting as an orchestrator that can add partners and products over time rather than concentrating value and distribution in a single flagship title.FIFA also pointed to existing performance metrics to support the expansion case, including its FIFA Super Soccer experience on Roblox which it says reaches more than 10 million monthly active users and has recorded over a billion plays.It added that FIFA Rivals has surpassed 2.5 million downloads since launch and has involved FIFA commercial partners including adidas, signalling a continued link between gaming activation and sponsorship delivery.On the esports side, FIFA said more than 120 Member Associations and over 16 million players have engaged on the pathway to the FIFAe Finals via Konami’s eFootball, with more than 1.1 billion views generated last year across FIFA’s football esports competitions.The updated strategy also sets up a pipeline of announcements and releases around the FIFA World Cup 2026 cycle, including further details on a reimagined FIFA-branded simulation experience developed with Netflix and Delphi Interactive, with more information due ahead of a scheduled release in June.FIFA said a FIFA World Cup – Launch Edition will act as the starting point for a longer product journey, with expansion planned across consoles, PC and mobile.Additional roadmap items include the release of FIFA Heroes across mobile and PC with a console roll-out to follow, five FIFAe Continental Championships as qualifiers for the FIFAe Finals 2026, and the announcement of the host city for an inaugural FIFAe Festival event format.