Two World Cup Video Games, One Broken Marriage — why Netflix and EA each shipped their own.

For nearly thirty years, if you wanted to play a soccer video game with the World Cup’s name on the box, there was one address: EA’s annual FIFA title. That marriage is over. As the 2026 World Cup kicked off across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, fans were handed not one official-ish soccer game but two competing ones — and neither comes from the partnership that built the genre.

On one side: Netflix, which now holds the FIFA gaming license and launched a deliberately simple simulation, FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition, on June 11 to coincide with the opening match. On the other: Electronic Arts, which lost the FIFA name in 2022 but kept the game, the engine, and the audience — and bolted a free 48-team “World’s Game” mode onto EA Sports FC 26 without any FIFA branding at all.

The split between the two products is, in the words of a recent Sportico “Sporticast” episode, a direct consequence of the acrimonious 2022 divorce between EA and FIFA. This page lays out who kept what, what the licensing fight was actually about, and what it all means for the person just trying to pick a game to play this summer.

• $150M/year — what EA reportedly paid FIFA for the naming license — FIFA's push to roughly double it helped end the partnership · Source: Inverse; Fortune
• $20 billion — the lifetime revenue Fortune attributed to the EA-FIFA franchise before the 2022 breakup · Source: Fortune
• 48 teams, 1,248 players — in Netflix's 'FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition,' built by L.A. studio Delphi Interactive, free with any Netflix plan · Source: Netflix Tudum; FIFA
• 41 of 48 — World Cup nations EA could license for its unbranded 'World's Game' mode — it lacks the official FIFA tournament rights · Source: Sportico; Wikipedia
• $55 billion — the Saudi PIF–led buyout taking EA private, approved by shareholders in December 2025 — the new owner hosts the 2034 World Cup · Source: Bloomberg; EA IR

The reason there are two games in 2026 is that there used to be one company doing the job of two. From 1993 until the end of 2022, EA published the FIFA series under a license from soccer’s global governing body. EA built the simulation; FIFA rented out its name and the World Cup association. By Fortune’s accounting, that arrangement generated something on the order of $20 billion over its lifetime — one of the most lucrative licensing deals in entertainment.

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It ended over money and control. EA was reportedly paying around $150 million a year for the FIFA name; reporting at the time described FIFA’s ambition to roughly double that fee, while also wanting to license its brand to other games and partners rather than keep it exclusive to EA. EA, for its part, had concluded it was paying a premium for four letters it did not strictly need. The two sides split, and EA rebranded its franchise EA Sports FC beginning in 2023.

“Following Electronic Arts and FIFA's split in 2022, both parties now have World Cup-related offerings on the market.”

Sportico, 'Sporticast' Episode 563 (June 2026)

In a divorce, the assets get divided — and here the division was lopsided. EA kept what actually mattered to players: the game engine, the player and league licenses (the Premier League, La Liga, UEFA Champions League, thousands of real footballers), the development studios, and the enormous Ultimate Team business that drives the revenue. FIFA kept the brand name and the rights to the World Cup tournament itself.

That asset split explains everything that followed. EA could keep making the best-playing soccer game on the market — just without the FIFA logo. FIFA owned a priceless name but no longer had a studio to make a game with it. So FIFA went looking for new partners, signing deals with the likes of Roblox, Mythical Games, and ultimately Netflix, while EA leaned harder into the franchise it already had. The Ultimate Team mode EA retained is no small thing: EA has generated roughly $1.6 billion in a single year from Ultimate Team microtransactions across its sports titles, the financial heart of the franchise.

EA’s answer to the World Cup was to give it away. On June 4, 2026, EA added a free mode to EA Sports FC 26 called The World’s Game — a 48-team international tournament that mirrors the real World’s format and scale. Because EA does not hold the official FIFA tournament license, it cannot call it the “World Cup,” and a handful of national teams are missing full licensing: Sportico reported EA secured roughly 41 of the 48 participating nations, with the likes of Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Curaçao, Jordan, and Qatar absent or appearing as generic kits at launch.

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The strategy is straightforward: ride the World Cup’s attention without paying for its name. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has called the 2026 World Cup “a potential growth driver” even without a FIFA commercial agreement, and EA has history on its side — North American sales of its soccer game grew about 50% in the wake of the 2022 Qatar World Cup. An EA spokesperson framed the tie-in as evangelism for the sport, calling the game “one of the most effective ways for fans to discover the sport.” The bet is that the best-playing product wins the serious player regardless of which three letters are on the title screen.

Netflix walked in from the opposite corner: it had the FIFA license through the governing body, but no soccer game and no decades of engine work. Announced jointly by FIFA and Netflix on December 17, 2025, FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition was built by a small Los Angeles studio, Delphi Interactive, which had reportedly been developing a soccer game for nearly two years before the Netflix partnership came together. It launched June 11, included free with every Netflix tier, with all 48 World Cup teams, 1,248 players, and the 16 host-city stadiums.

Netflix is not pretending it built a console killer. The game is deliberately simple — your TV is the stadium, your phone is the controller via a QR-code pairing, and up to four people can play instantly. Alain Tascan, Netflix’s president of games, was blunt about the trade-off: the game is built to capture “the fun,” not to compete on graphics. Reviews were harsh on the visuals — one outlet called it “woefully undercooked” — but that misses the strategy. The title is a hook to deepen subscriber engagement and to seed Netflix’s broader World Cup push, which also includes a daily studio show and a slate of soccer documentaries.

“Are we going to look like a super high-definition console game or a high-end PC game? Absolutely not.”

Alain Tascan, Netflix President of Games, to Sportico (June 2026)

Strip away the soccer and you have two very different business models colliding. For Netflix, the game is a retention play: zero marginal cost to the subscriber, designed to keep people inside the app during the biggest sporting event on earth. Netflix has been clear it is not chasing the hardcore console market — it is using the FIFA name to add another reason to keep paying the monthly bill, the same logic behind its broader sports expansion. Notably, Netflix does not hold U.S. broadcast rights to the 2026 men’s tournament (Fox does), but it did secure exclusive streaming rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cups.

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For EA, the World Cup mode is a monetization play layered on the existing franchise — a free update that pulls lapsed players back into EA Sports FC 26 and, by extension, back toward Ultimate Team. The stakes for EA just rose: in September 2025 the company agreed to be taken private in a $55 billion buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, with Silver Lake and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, at $210 a share — a deal shareholders approved that December. The buyer’s sovereign sponsor is also the host of the 2034 World Cup, a reminder that soccer’s gaming business is now entangled with the sport’s geopolitics.

For the player choosing a game this summer, the split is less a tragedy than a menu. If you want a deep, console-grade simulation with real squads and don’t mind the absence of the FIFA logo, EA Sports FC 26 and its World’s Game mode are the serious option. If you already pay for Netflix, want something the whole couch can pick up in thirty seconds, and don’t care that it looks like a soccer game from a decade ago, the Netflix title is free and frictionless.

The trade-off neither game can fully solve is authenticity versus polish. Netflix has the officialFIFA name and the real tournament branding but a thin, casual game; EA has the deep, polished game but has to call its World Cup something else and quietly leave out a handful of nations. For the first time in a generation, no single product offers both the best-playing soccer game and the World Cup’s name on the box — and that is the clearest legacy of the 2022 breakup.

Two World Cup games in 2026 is not a coincidence or a glut — it is the predictable result of a partnership that fell apart over a licensing fee and left each party holding half of what it took to make a hit. EA kept the game and rebuilt the tournament without the name; FIFA kept the name and rented out the game to Netflix. One is a polished simulation that can’t say “World Cup”; the other says “World Cup” but plays like a phone game. The biggest soccer tournament ever staged on U.S. soil arrived with its gaming rights more fragmented than at any point in three decades — and the business reasons behind that, not the soccer, are the real story. We will keep tracking how the two products sell, and whether FIFA’s diversified gaming bets pay off.

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Last updated June 23, 2026