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EA Sports FC 24 to feature Women’s Ultimate Team, leakers claim

A shiny new mode for the first year without FIFA?
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Leakers claim that EA Sports FC 24, the next iteration of EA Sports’ soccer simulation series, will feature an Ultimate Team mode with female athletes. These leaks come in the wake of EA adding the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL) to FIFA 23, which is the latest release of the popular franchise and will be the last to bear the FIFA name.

EA Sports and FIFA, the global governing body of soccer, have proclaimed an end to their hugely successful partnership with each other in 2022 after two decades. EA reportedly was unhappy with creative restrictions imposed by FIFA, which also wanted to more than double the license costs for continuing the cooperation. Therefore, future soccer video games developed by EA will be titled EA Sports FC starting with EA Sports FC 24, which is expected to launch in Fall 2023.

EA made a lot of progress with the integration of female players in FIFA 23, putting Chelsea FC star Samantha Kerr on the game’s cover and adding lots of animations specifically tailored to authentically represent how the beautiful game is played by women. The update with the NWSL and UWCL, which will go live on March 15, 2023, is merely the latest step in this development – and if the leakers are right, it won’t be the end of it.

Women’s Ultimate Team would not be the first instance of EA Sports adding female players to one of its cash cow game modes: NHL 23 already includes the possibility of adding women to national teams in Hockey Ultimate Team.

The FIFA community is less than thrilled about this possibility, not exactly presenting a very open-minded image of itself – from making tasteless misogynistic jokes to threatening not to play a game featuring such a mode, many players seem to be prejudiced regarding such a change, which seems relatively typical for an audience of a male-dominated sports game.

However, a few voices have a more positive outlook and hope that such a game mode could further enhance the popularity and inclusivity of the series.

An expansion of the female presence in EA Sports FC 24 seems on the horizon outside of a potential Women’s Ultimate Team mode as well:

It seems like EA is slowly adding more and more female clubs to its game database in order to include them in the next title – from the look of things, the premium female soccer league in Germany, the Frauen-Bundesliga, might be one of the competitions that will be added.

For the moment, this all remains unconfirmed, but we expect to learn more about EA Sports FC 24 during Summer 2023.