In some of the biggest news of its 20-year history, the next instalment of Football Manager will feature the fully licensed Premier League.
Developer Sports Interactive has announced the Premier League will be licensed in Football Manager 2025 on the game’s website.
This means the game will feature ”official logos, kits and player photos”, and all 20 teams from the league are included.
“Since Football Manager’s inception, we have always wanted to work with the Premier League, and we’re delighted to announce that at last we are,” said Football Manager Studio Director Miles Jacobson.
Football Manager 2024, the current entry, does have a stack of officially licensed English football leagues, including those of Sky Bet and Vanarama. But the Premier League was replaced by the English Premier Division.
However, fan sites have allowed PC players to download and install logo and player face packs that bring an added layer of authenticity to the game.
That won’t be necessary, it seems, in Football Manager 2025. And it’s even better news for players on PlayStation 5, Xbox or Switch, who can’t simply download these mod packs.
The deal is a four-year arrangement, but there has been no announcement on how much this licensing deal has cost.
On the other side of the football game spectrum, EA lost the rights to FIFA in 2022, after almost 30 years of video games, in a reported disagreement over fees.
Its series was rebranded EA Sports FC. According to PC Gamer, Sports FC sold around five per cent fewer copies than FIFA 23, with 2.25 million to the older edition’s 2.39 million.
Football Manager 2025 is expected to be released in November 2024 and will be the biggest revamp the series has had in years. It sees the developers switch to Unity, a widely used game engine, rather than an in-house one that has gradually been tweaked each year since 2009. It is the first major visual revamp the series has had since 2017, according to the Football Manager website.
