EA Sports’ FIFA series has become an iconic name in the world of virtual sports, with a legacy that stretches back decades and a fan base that spans the globe. These games aren’t just a digital rehash of the FIFA league; they’re a time capsule, offering teams and players from various seasons and eras. Since its inaugural kick-off in December 1993, the FIFA series has set the bar for what sports games can be. Amid the roaring crowd and virtual stadiums, a burning question emerges: How many people play FIFA? As we lace up our boots to journey through EA Sports FIFA statistics, we’ll tackle that question and more, giving you a panoramic view of this iconic series. If you want to take a look at the growth of the video game industry as a whole, we have that too!
EA Sports FIFA key stats
Okay, the series is massive, there is no denying that, but there are very few things that cannot be expressed through the magic of the Internet! Because of this, we are going to be listing some key stats for the EA Sports FIFA franchise and display them in an easy-to-digest format so all of your questions are going to be answered and hopefully you learn something new!
FIFA 23 had an average of 67,723 players on Steam in 2022.
(Source: SteamDB)
- FIFA 23’s highest player count was on September 29, 2022, at 78,449 players.
- The game had 66,377 players two weeks after its release.
- The game had 70,232 players in November 2022.
Although the FIFA series is mainly marketed toward console gamers, there is no denying that the series has also had some popularity on Steam, hence the main statistic focusing on Steam players directly. There is no information concerning the total console player count, apart from news about the most recent FIFA games breaking launch records, but this should suffice just the same.
FIFA 22 had an average of 69,319 players on Steam in 2022.
(Source: SteamDB)
- Its peak player count was on May 26, 2022, at 108,295 players.
- It had 51,711 players at release.
- The latest data shows that the game saw a 73% decrease in its player count from May to November 2022.
FIFA 22 was (and still is) immensely popular in the world of sports games since it has had more average players on Steam than FIFA 23, and that is for all the right reasons. Many fans regard FIFA 22 as being an extremely high-quality game that is worth the money, and we will take a look at some of the launch stats that the game was able to accumulate in the first 20 or so days of its release.
FIFA 23 broke FIFA 22’s record for most players at launch at 10.3 million.
(Source: GamesIndustry)
- 41% of the game’s sales were for the PS5.
- 30% of sales were for the PS4.
- 17% of sales were for the Xbox One.
- 6% of sales were for the Nintendo Switch and the Xbox Series X/S.
FIFA 22 had a fantastic launch reaching more than 9 million players logged in to play a match, but its glory was overthrown by the launch of FIFA 23 when it managed to log more than 10 million players and beat it in other areas as well. We also tacked on some sales percentages for all of the consoles that the game is available for, and we can see that, as always, the FIFA series is the most popular for Playstation consoles. Console players rejoice!
FIFA 22 had a record-breaking launch totaling 9.1 million active players.
(Source: VGChartz)
- 7.6 million Ultimate Team Squads were created.
- 460 million matches were played in the game’s launch period.
There is not much to say about these stats other than that FIFA 22 was just a major hit in the sports gaming niche and the hype surrounding the game was extremely justified.
Electronic Arts makes $1.6 billion from the FIFA series annually.
(Source: Goal)
- Ultimate Team makes up 29% of Electronic Art’s total revenue.
- The company made $1.62 billion from Ultimate Team in 2020.
- FIFA made $158.9 million from licensing rights from EA Sports FIFA.
- The total revenue FIFA made from this agreement was $266.5 million.
Something that we can all agree on is that these sports franchise games are always going to sell, no matter if their launch is plagued with issues or if the game is not playable in certain ways (looking at you, Cyberpunk). Because they always sell well to their target audience, they are always going to be raking in more money than other standalone games. This is why the FIFA series has generated a lot of revenue over the years. No information tells us how much the series has earned as a whole, but we can speculate enough by looking at the annual revenue presented here.
The EA Sports FIFA series has sold over 325 million copies since the first game.
(Source: Forbes)
- The highest-selling FIFA title is FIFA 18 with 26.4 million sales.
- FIFA 19 has 20 million sales.
- FIFA 11 has 16 million sales.
And finally, we can take a look at some sales stats for the FIFA series in general. The series has been around since 1993 so it has had all of the time in the world to accumulate over 325 million sales, and we can only assume how much that would equate to in dollars. Based on total units sold, we can see that FIFA 18 is the most popular FIFA game to come out, and we believe that is because it came out in the heyday of the PS4 when everyone wanted to play the game to have a great time, and when IRL PvP was much more widespread.
FIFA user stats
A great game is nothing without its user base, so we are going to be taking a look at some key FIFA user stats to see where these fans are from, how old they are, etc. The FIFA series is extremely popular with the younger user demographics since the core dynamic of the game caters well to people who like to spend time with friends after school or college, like the older days in Internet clubs and whatnot. Anyway, let’s take a look!
FIFA 23 players scored 4.3 billion goals in the first 23 days of its release.
(Source: Electronic Arts)
- 1.7 billion matches were played.
- The game was played in 200+ nations.
- Players spent 15 billion minutes playing the game.
- 185 FUT moments were completed.
- 1 million wins were achieved by AFC Richmond.
From this stat, we can see that the player engagement for the newest FIFA game (at the time of writing) is simply fantastic as players have played nearly two billion games within the first 23 days of its release. Besides this fact, we can also see that players logged an insane amount of hours into the game, although it is expressed in minutes. This makes sense as the game time tracking system most likely uses minutes in a match as the metric as opposed to hours. If the stats are this impressive at the start of the game’s lifetime, we can only expect things to keep up like this.
FIFA 22 players scored 5 billion goals within the first 22 days of its release.
(Source: Electronic Arts)
- 1.1 billion matches were played.
- 12.3 billion minutes of playtime were logged.
- 51 million matches were played per day.
- The game was played in 200+ nations.
- PSG was the most selected club at 15 million matches played.
- 21 million Volta matches were played.
- 58 million Pro Club matches were played.
- 3.1 million new clubs were created in Career Mode.
Oh look, it’s the thing we just mentioned! Here we can see that FIFA 22 actually accumulated fewer core stats at its launch than FIFA 23, but they are still fairly close, warranting some amazement a how far the series has come since some of the earlier games. We can guarantee you that EA never expected to see stats like these when they released the first FIFA game, and we can also be sure that these stats are going to be overshadowed even more with every new game that comes out.
24.74% of FIFA players are from the United States.
(Source: Fiction Horizon)
- 5.36% of players are from Germany.
- 5.27% of players are from the United Kingdom.
- 4.32% of players are from Russia.
- 4.04% of players are from Brazil.
No surprises here, the country/region with the most FIFA players is the United States. This is a common occurrence when it comes to many games today as the United States accounts for a vast majority of the gaming industry. Other than that, the games are also quite popular in the United Kingdom since football is the national sport there. The rest of the user base is spread out across the globe relatively evenly.
FIFA’s core target demographic is 12-15-year-olds.
(Source: FIFA Forums)
- 1% of users believe the target demographic is 3 to 7-year-olds.
- 2% of users believe the target demographic is 8 to 11-year-olds.
- 34% of users believe that the target demographic is 16 to 21-year-olds.
- 16% of users believe that the target demographic is 22-year-olds and older.
Although there is no official data on the age ranges of FIFA players, the data that is available tells us that the target demographic for the FIFA games is 12 to 15-year-olds, which is an ideal range for young gamers to get accustomed to the games they start playing and grow into lifetime fans. The other main demographic for the FIFA games are 16 to 21-year-olds, ideal for the type of gameplay that FIFA has.
FIFA Twitch stats
Now it’s time to see how the last three FIFA games have performed on the Twitch scene, namely what the user engagement looks like and how many viewers they have accumulated over the years. Since the FIFA games are very competitive in nature so they make for great content! They also offer a great deal of replayability, ideal for fans who would much rather sit back and watch the games instead of having to deal with it themselves.
Twitch users have spent 373.78 million hours watching the last three FIFA games on Twitch.
(Source: SullyGnome)
- The most-watched game is FIFA 22 with 265,303,948 hours of watch time.
- The games had 8,914,391 hours of broadcasting.
- These hours were broadcast by 1,016 average channels.
- The average viewer count for the last three games was 42,667.
A good way to look at the overall success of only the last three FIFA games is to take a look at some of the stats surrounding Twitch as a whole. In a week, Twitch has around 416 million hours watched, just 11% more than what those games managed to accumulate in their short time out. These stats stand as a testament to the massive success of the FIFA series, and we can only expect things to improve as time goes on.
FIFA 23 is ranked 32nd on Twitch by average viewers.
(Source: SullyGnome)
- By peak viewers, FIFA 23 is ranked 25th.
- FIFA 22 is ranked 18th on Twitch by average viewers.
- By peak viewers, FIFA 22 is ranked 14th.
- FIFA 21 is ranked 1,116th on Twitch by average viewers.
- By peak viewers, FIFA 21 is ranked 1,104th.
The final line of statistics we have for you is in regard to the general position of the last three FIFA games on Twitch when it comes to viewers. Understandably, since FIFA 22 has had the time to accumulate more and more views since 2021, it is going to be performing the best out of the three games, at least until FIFA 23 has had time to marinate in the industry. We added FIFA 21 to the comparison so you can see how much games tend to fall off when their successor joins the party. Overall, the three games have had a good deal of success, something that EA should be proud of!
To sum up
Alright, that would be all we have to say about the massive success of EA Sports’ FIFA series. As we said already, the FIFA series started in 1993 as a rudimentary, pixelated game that was severely limited in mechanics and its general gameplay dynamic, but it was a gem of its time and the cornerstone of the next-gen gameplay of modern FIFA games. When it comes to the modern FIFA games, it is good to mention that FIFA will be changing its name from FIFA to EA Sports FC due to some copyright issues. Although the series will continue under a new name, we have no doubts that the series will only grow in popularity and continue being the amazing series it has been since the 90s. We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed this content and that all of your questions have been answered.
Sources
- “EA SPORTS™ FIFA 23”. SteamDB, 2022, https://steamdb.info/app/1811260/graphs/
- “23 Days of FIFA 23”. Electronic Arts, 2022, https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/fifa/fifa-23/news/23-days-of-fifa-23
- “FIFA 22”. SteamDB, 2022, https://steamdb.info/app/1506830/graphs/
- “22 Days of FIFA 22”. Electronic Arts, 2021, https://www.ea.com/games/fifa/fifa-22/news/22-days-of-fifa-22
- “FIFA 22 Had a Record-Breaking Launch, Tops 9.1 Million Players – News”. VGChartz, 2021, https://www.vgchartz.com/article/450981/fifa-22-had-a-record-breaking-launch-tops-91-million-players/
- “FIFA 23 boxed launch beats FIFA 22 | UK Physical Charts”. GamesIndustry.biz, 2022, https://www.gamesindustry.biz/fifa-23-boxed-launch-beats-fifa-22-uk-physical-charts
- “FIFA 23 sees 10.3 million players in launch week”. GamesIndustry.biz, 2022, https://www.gamesindustry.biz/fifa-23-sees-103-million-players-in-launch-week
- “How much money does EA Sports make from FIFA & Ultimate Team?”. Goal, 2021, https://www.goal.com/en/news/how-much-money-does-ea-sports-make-from-fifa–ultimate-team/r1tbutqcbjhx19gkz54rtrp68
- “As FIFA Game Passes Sales Milestone, EA Sports Seeks New Markets And To Clear Up Image Rights ‘Misunderstanding’”. Forbes, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertkidd/2021/02/02/as-fifa-game-passes-sales-milestone-ea-sports-seeks-new-markets-and-to-clear-up-image-rights-misunderstanding/
- “How Many People Play FIFA 22? (User & Growth Stats)”. Fiction Horizon, 2022, https://fictionhorizon.com/how-many-people-play-fifa-22-user-growth-stats/
- “What age bracket do you think EA target with Fifa games?”. FIFAForums, 2020, https://fifaforums.easports.com/en/discussion/554948/what-age-bracket-do-you-think-ea-target-with-fifa-games
- “FIFA 21”. SullyGnome, 2022, https://sullygnome.com/game/FIFa_21/365
- “FIFA 22”. SullyGnome, 2022, https://sullygnome.com/game/FIFa_22/365/summary
- “FIFA 23”. SullyGnome, 2022, https://sullygnome.com/game/FIFa_23/365/summary