Established brand, millions of years of players, almost a monopoly on the market of football simulations: FIFA is an absolute flagship of the Publishers EA SPORTS in the sports segment. Not least because of this, because competitor Konami has set up the only major alternative, Efootball (formerly pro evolution soccer), this year has so far a leg this year.

Streamer looking for variety

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But behind the sales and the promotes maximized in modes in modes as ultimate team seems to crumble the facade: more and more streamer turns away from the franchise.

Because regularly it pulls great names of the FIFA scene like ‘Gamerbrother’ or ‘TiSi Schubech’ in their streams in other games. Currently in F1 2022, in which Gamerbrother ‘already organized a “Streamer World Cup”. At the same time, other established sizes such as ‘the basement’ operate at Pack Openings in real life and open panini, Topps or Pokemon sets in their streams – or sweep like ‘Eliasn97’ the game even completely the back.

Loss of interest of the viewer?

For a reason for this development, ‘TiSi Schubech’ was already provided several months ago: in a stream at the end of October – no four weeks after the release of FIFA 22 – the two green towns wanted to have recognized sinking interest from the viewers. This is evident about different platforms and creators, they said at that time.

YouTube views sink blatant

And indeed: A look at the calls of the first YouTube videos after releasing this year’s offshoot and previous publications of the FIFA series supports this guess. Not only in the “Tisis”, as they are called by viewers, the clicks in the last two years were noticeably after.

Other large youtubers such as already mentioned names or ‘feel FIFA’ and ‘FIFA Goals United’ lost compared to FIFA 21 and especially for FIFA 20, the click-strongest part of recent years, massive calls – partly even in the six-digit area.

For example, with two packs Openings from the Youtuber and Streamer ‘of the Keller’: the drawn Lionel Messi to FIFA-21 release brought him for just under 200,000 clicks on Youtube, after publication of FIFA 22 at the end of last year, only just under 100,000 views.

Twitch less affected

The same can be confirmed in parts with regard to the streaming platform Twitch: The peak number of the simultaneously active viewers according to Twitch Tracker from FIFA 20 on FIFA 21 still significantly higher from about 365,000 to 841,000 upwards, they sagged this year to 787,000.

The same as the number of streamers active at the same time developed at the same time: from in the top 5008 channels during FIFA 20 to 7704 in FIFA 21 and 6280 in FIFA 22.

Sales figures remain stable

However, the sales figures of the game speak a different language: According to “Games Economy” FIFA 20 sold in the German market alone over 1.5 million times. A record, the FIFA 21 with over two million sales even overbid. And even FIFA 22 started strongly and was one of only three plays published in 2021, which sold over 500,000 times by the end of the year.

While the interest of the fanbase at the passive consumption of the game seems to actually slightly growing a bit, the number of buyers remains stable. The hype around EA SPORTS ‘flagship, so it is not likely to tear off. The hype about content to the series but probably already.