In order to have the Brazilian club’s players in past FIFA editions, EA Sports relied on the negotiations carried out with FIFPro. This requirement is the key factor that has been causing EA Sports a lot of problems in Brazil over the past years. Moreover, it is mandatory that the contract contains the personal, express, and unambiguous authorisation to use the image. According to Brazilian jurisprudence, in order to be valid this contract must be interpreted restrictively, containing all its specific uses and exactly how the counterpart intends to exploit the image in question. As already explained in one of our articles, despite those characteristics the image of a player can be economically exploited by a third party through an assignment agreement. The image right is classified as a personality right protected by the Brazilian Federal Constitution and has some special characteristics, such as being untransferable, indefeasible and unwaivable. Unfortunately, the agreements made between EA Sports and FIFPro are not considered valid under the law of one of FIFA’s biggest markets: Brazil. This allowed EA Sports to exploit thousands of football players’ images in a very effective way, as the negotiations were much less expensive and simpler. Usually, most of those negotiations are carried out with FIFPro, the global representative for professional football players. In order to license and exploit athletes’ images in FIFA, EA Sports has to negotiate image rights contracts that allow it to reproduce them in the game. The reason for this is the specific protection that Brazilian legislation and jurisprudence grant to image rights, as will be explained in this article. One comic example is Flamengo’s star “Gabigol” who was replaced in FIFA by a generic player called “Oswaldinato” having a completely different look. Unfortunately, since FIFA 15 Brazilian clubs do not have their athletes licensed in the game, having generic players in their squads instead, which naturally frustrates thousands of gamers who wish to play with the teams they support. The producers are also able to simulate the players’ abilities and the way athletes play in real life.īrazil has some of the most fanatic and loyal football fans in the whole world and, consequently, is one of the biggest markets for EA Sports’ FIFA. It goes without saying that every year the virtual reproduction of players’ physical characteristics is more realistic with loads of details such as Messi’s and Neymar’s tattoos being perfectly reproduced in recent editions.

FIFA, the football game produced by EA Sports, is the go-to title for most of the gamers around the world, consistently appearing in the best-seller list year after year. In 2019, it generated 120.1 Billion dollars, involving more than 2.5 billion gamers across the world. The electronic games market is huge, but still in a period of expansion.

Fifa 2020