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So one of football's most iconic franchises has a new name.

EA Sports FC24 signalled the end of one of the biggest commercial partnerships in the world of sports and entertainment, a smash hit video game that inadvertently became a PR masterstroke for football's world governing body.

We'll deal with its cultural footprint, messy divorce and bright future,

and we'll see how far into this episode we get before somebody just calls it FIFA.

I'm Adam Leventhal. Welcome to the Athletic Football Podcast.

Okay, on the way, we're going to be hearing from the vice president of Brand at EA Sports,

a top FC24 influencer, and we'll get the take of our senior football news reporter Matt Slater.

But in the studio, begrudgingly hitting pause on their PlayStation to talk about rather than play the game itself are the athletics

Jay Harris and Art de Roche. How are you? I'm good. As he said, I was I was stacking up some

wins on all of it teams so I'm begrudgingly glad to be here. And Jay, you've just been all in

since its release? I have yeah and I was playing it reasonably late last night as well, so apologies if, you know, you can see the bags under my eyes, that's why. And you mentioned before we started recording a bit of, a bit of karma came to bite you on the backside when you were playing. Just tell us about that. I was playing with Jamar Musiala, and I was just trying to be clever and flick the ball over someone's head. I promised by accident. I don't set out to humiliate people like that. And then the person went up the other end and scored immediately and I think shushed me as well. I like it. I like it. Showboat karma. Yeah. Coming back to bite you. Good. Right. Let's start with the culture, because

we're going to talk about all aspects of the new game. It is such an iconic brand.

It started 30 years ago back in 1993, became a global phenomenon. Everything from the music

in the game, the soundtrack each year, the likeness to the players,

the celebrations, the skills, the cover stars. What are your early memories, Art gone?

I was actually thinking about this before this podcast was kind of brought up to me. And it's FIFA football 2004.

I remember that was the first edition.

I actually played.

...