FIFA 97, with the legendary Bebeto on the cover, could have been the release that changed the video game history most famous football game of all time. An Electronics Arts executive revealed how the highest entity in the king of sports tried to betray them by offering the rights to the title to the people at Sony, who were in the midst of the explosion of their first PlayStation console.
Fortunately for those of us who are fans of this video game, Sony was loyal to Electronics Arts and did not sign any contract behind its back, so that the management of EA Sports, already very famous at that time, continued to lead the game that they themselves had created. in 1994.
The whole story is told by Tom Stone, former vice president of European marketing at EA in 1997, who spoke in an interview with TimeExtensionaccording to review 3DGames.
The betrayal came from a company linked to FIFA, called International Sport and Leisure (ISL), which, since they had the license to the video game, tried to seal better profits by offering the rights to Sony.
“Chris Deering (president of Sony PlayStation Europe in 1997) met me and said, ‘We’ve been offered the rights to FIFA Soccer.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Oh really? Has ISL contacted you and asked if you want an exclusive worldwide license for FIFA? After everything we’ve done for them?’ “I got really angry,” Stone said.
“He told me, ‘I won’t sign that agreement unless you can’t reach an agreement with FIFA. That agreement is yours. You created it.’ Chris obviously had a global view of EA’s support of PlayStation around the world. However, I think it would have been an interesting conversation if Sony had signed that deal. “I think EA would have responded quite badly to that,” added the Electronics Arts executive.
Tom Stone himself says that the company was not very happy with the way they were working with FIFA.
“We were doing a lot more for FIFA than they were doing for us from a brand point of view. So we were discussing abandoning it for decades before EA did it. The only reason they didn’t do it was because the marketing department was terrified of losing that brand awareness. “We were tired of paying for it, but every time we had to renegotiate with FIFA, they didn’t want to take the risk of having to change brands,” he mentioned.
This is how the history of the FIFA video game could have changed if Sony agreed to be the developer of the title.