Video gaming's longest running industry rivalry continues, as FIFA publisher EA has re-signed the rights to Juventus from PES/eFootball creators Konami, meaning the Italian team will feature exclusively in FIFA 23. For non-football heads, this is like Games Workshop reacquiring the rights to the skaven, having previously lost them to Wizards of the Coast.
It'll be the first time the Serie A club has featured in FIFA since the 2019 iteration of the game, when Konami surprised fans of football gaming by announcing PES 2020 would feature Juve as an exclusive club. Since then, EA has used the fake team Piemonte Calcio—which literally means "Piemonte Football", after the region where Juventus is based.
That's all changed now, as Juventus is back under EA's massive managerial brolly. EA Sports announced that the "exclusive multi-year partnership" gives them the rights to Juventus' club logo, kits, and the Juventus stadium, Allianz Arena. EA Sports also announced that former Juventus player Claudio Marchisio will appear in FIFA 23 as a Hero Card for that game's iteration of FIFA Ultimate Team. Marchisio is a Juventus legend, having won seven Serie A titles and reaching the Champions League final in 2015 and 2017 with the club.
"This phenomenal club means so much to us and our fans, and will enable EA sports to continue to deliver the most authentic and comprehensive interactive football experiences possible in FIFA 23 and beyond," said David Jackson, VP of brand for EA Sports FIFA. Meanwhile, Juventus' Chief Revenue Officer Giorgio Ricci said that the deal with EA Sports "goes beyond the concept of a traditional partnership", which, given this looks like a very standard licensing deal, might be a slight exaggeration.
Nonetheless, signing Juventus is a big get for EA, putting further distance between its reliable football experience and Konami's still-troubled eFootball. Approaching one year from its disastrous launch, eFootball still has a "mostly negative" overall rating on Steam, and the loss of the Juventus licence reduces its number of signed teams from the Italian league to just four.
EA, meanwhile, is confident enough in its game that it is ditching the FIFA brand from next year, meaning that FIFA 23 will be the last EA-produced football game with FIFA in the title when it launches on September 30.
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