Video Games

Football Manager to include Premier League clubs with official kits

A massive deal for Sports Interactive

Marco Wutz

Sports Interactive / Sega / Premier League

Sports Interactive, the developer of the iconic Football Manager series, announced that it struck a four-year licensing deal with Premier League, the most important soccer competition in England and one of the world’s three top leagues alongside Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga.

Starting with Football Manager 2025, which is due for release later this year, the series will depict all 20 Premier League clubs with their official logos, kits, and player images. Licensing is a major draw for sports games, so the studio landing the licensing rights for one of the most popular and competitive leagues on the globe is a massive get.

Previous editions of the successful management sim use placeholder clubs, players, and kits in lieu of their real counterparts, though modders often provide some more authentic assets for the players who want them.

Miles Jacobson, the studio director at Sports Interactive, commented: “Since Football Manager's inception, we have always wanted to work with the Premier League, and we're delighted to announce today that at last we are. The partnership isn't just about the huge in-game benefits it'll give our fans, but also the opportunities it provides us to help with the incredible things that the Premier League and their clubs do off the pitch. That includes community and charitable work, two things we're enormously passionate about, as well as the ability to work with some of their existing partners.”

“We are very grateful to the Premier League and their other partners in our space for enabling us to be an officially licensed product of the world's most commercially successful football league,” he added.

Will Brass, the Premier League’s CCO, said: “Football Manager has been a big part of the sporting landscape for decades, and is loved and enjoyed by millions of fans around the world. We are thrilled that the Premier League will now feature even more prominently in the game, helping to deliver a deeper, more authentic experience for anybody who takes on the challenge of managing a Premier League club.”

As Football Manager gears up for some massive changes in the upcoming series entries, this is another breath of fresh air and confidence for the franchise.

Published
Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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