Italian giants Inter Milan have signed an exclusive partnership with Konami to make eFootball the only football game the Nerazzurri will be officially licensed for from the 2024/25 season. This means the club's name and branding won't appear in EA Sports FC — or indeed any other football title — from that season until an unspecified time.
The deal means Inter Milan's kits, training tops, and the famous San Siro stadium will only be found in eFootball also. A press release adds: "Alongside a host of branding and commercial rights, Inter Milan will also integrate themselves within the array of eSports tournaments and activations that KONAMI runs, including the eFootball Championship Pro, the most recent edition of which concluded last weekend."
A number of other Italian sides have been signed up by Konami in years past, including Juventus, Roma, Lazio, and Atalanta. Napoli is also joining the exclusive club from this coming season onwards. The deals force EA to come up with new names for the clubs in FIFA 22, and attach them to default stadiums. For example, Juventus is called Piemonte Calcio in the game. Inter Milan will now have to be given a fake name when the deal kicks in.
"This new multi-year global partnership agreement proves the importance of a common path between Inter and KONAMI, a clear commitment that resumes a bond that began years ago and will continue into the future, based on shared values and objectives," said Inter Milan corporate CEO Alessandro Antonello. Most recently, Inter Milan have been in the news for selling Romelu Lukaka for £97.5 million and then getting him back on loan just one season later for less than a tenth of that asking price. Shrewd business from the Nerazzurri.
Comments 15
Woeful decision for fans, purely self serving.
These deals are just nonsense. In this day and age, all football games should have the rights to each team.
What a mess of licences is going to be between these 2; eFootball and EAFC.
Nah this sucks. I hate ending up in a UCL group with weirdly named teams. What are they going to call Inter Milan in career mode?? Give me a damn game where I can play against all teams please.
But the San siro doesn't just belong to inter milan, so does AC Milan being in EA sports fc give it the right to have the San siro as well?
Also do these teams know how much of a flop this game is? No one will be playing it and especially not just for a few Italian teams
Back when I still played football games I always played on PC because you can solve issues like this one with mods and fan made patches. Back in the PS2 and PS3 days you could do that too in some PES games from what I recall... But nowadays if you're playing on console you're out of luck.
This type of licence stuff bums me out. I think the best sports game I ever played isn’t even licensed and I think it’s got so much more life/soul because of it (Super Mega Baseball 3, go Wideloads!).
@Clemerek WePes has some great patches for console versions of recent pes games.
@Clemerek In PES 2021 you could use edit mode on consoles and download patches. It’s being added to eFootball at a later date.
@nessisonett that's neat, sadly I don't think the FIFA games have anything like that on consoles... I only play career mode so unlicensed teams are a bummer to see.
Not that I play football games all that much anymore anyway, I downloaded FIFA 22 and only played some matches before I got bored and moved on to another game. Back in the day I could play entire seasons and get really invested in building a team.
@Clemerek Yeah, I’ve been playing a season per FIFA on the PS2 ones and I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying them. They’re just pure fun, you play games and you build your team. Nothing overcomplicated like the new ones.
They've royally messed up pes ever since changing to this F2P model. They released a glorified demo for Efootball and are asking players to pay for arguably their best mode (master league) miles behind FIFA in terms of quality. I'm glad I've went back to fifa this year.
Whyyyyyy efootball is absolute trash! One of the worst games I have ever played it makes fifa look amazing! That's saying something
None of this is good for us fans.
Other than clubs ( The mode I always played ) and the licences I think efootballs actual gameplay is better than FIFA this year. I have played a lot of FIFA and the gameplay is stale, the players still look cartoon like, players still walk out like they have arthritis in knees. Efootball isn't without faults but I'm enjoying just the odd kick off game
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