To Give FIFA’s Roblox Deal Context, Look at YouTube

Corporate boardrooms are trying to wrap their heads around how to leverage mobile-focused video game behemoth Roblox for their own gain, similar to how they were once forced to adapt to the rise of YouTube.

Like YouTube, Roblox diverges from the entertainment status quo. Both are driven by a sprawling network of content creators, many of whom begin as independent developers with little technical knowledge, and their audiences skew young. YouTube gives people tools to publish videos and an app in which users can watch them; Roblox gives people tools to build video games and an app in which users can play them.

Because of how Roblox games originate, they do not look as polished as those from big-budget studios on Xbox or PlayStation consoles. The graphics are rudimentary, and the games are most often played via mobile devices. Yet Roblox’s offerings, which are mostly free to play but often sell in-game cosmetic items and power-ups, can still be wildly popular, amassing more than 100 million daily active players. As Sportico has reported, mobile gaming is significantly larger than console usage globally.

Roblox’s grittier feel—akin to the appeal of an at-home YouTube vlog—is an asset. That said, it’s a trait that poses a challenge for brands, which feel a need to get involved but must do so in a way that comes off as organic within the raw aesthetics of the platform.

Enter the middlemen. Companies such as Gamefam connect native Roblox games and their creators with brands, reminiscent of the multi-channel networks (MCNs) that proliferated YouTube in the early 2010s and signed video makers to content partnerships.

The middlemen assume development and commercial responsibilities upon gaining a game’s rights. They implement corporate markings while ensuring a title still resonates with users.

On Friday, Gamefam announced the release of FIFA Super Soccer—a rebrand of a popular game it already owned, Super League Soccer. FIFA Super Soccer is one of many Roblox titles Gamefam has acquired from independent creators. As part of its adaptation, it added licensed properties related to FIFA, teams and some of FIFA’s brand partners, such as Adidas.

In this case, Gamefam has maintained a working relationship with the game maker, Mats Watte, whose original creation did not feature any intellectual property from soccer organizations. Gamefam did not disclose the financial terms of its licensing pact with FIFA that led to the rebranding.

“I was just in a meeting earlier today, and we were talking about, well, this is kind of like a [multi-channel network],” Ricardo Briceno, chief business officer of Gamefam, told Sportico in a video interview ahead of the FIFA Super Soccer announcement. “But it’s also a dirty word these days. So we’re not quite an MCN because it’s not just aggregating, because we also are operating and, like developing and doing things. But I don’t think it’s a bad example. It’s a good connection there.”

Many of YouTube’s multi-channel networks, perhaps most infamously Machinima, ultimately developed negative reputations. Independent creators came to resent the deals they signed, which they considered predatory because of lopsided revenue-sharing terms and long-term restrictions that barred them from working elsewhere.

There are some differences between MCNs and third-party Roblox development companies. For starters, the game, not the creator, is the main product on Roblox. Rather than set a perpetual quota for influencer content production, as was often the case with YouTube MCNs that would burn out video makers, Roblox’s middlemen generally obtain a game that already exists and then handle further development themselves.

Watte, the person who created the game that has morphed into FIFA Super Soccer, is a college student at King’s College London, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has developed games since he was a kid. Watte has spoken positively in public posts about his experiences with Gamefam. When Gamefam helped FIFA integrate Club World Cup branding into what was then called Super League Soccer for a prior agreement, Watte wrote, “Thank you to Gamefam and FIFA for trusting us with this opportunity, and to everyone on my team for making this happen in such a short span of time.”

A spokesperson representing Gamefam declined to specify whether Watte received an upfront payment for FIFA Super Soccer, whether he gets a cut of future revenue related to the title, or whether his role as “Creative Director for FIFA Super Soccer” means he is a full-time, salaried employee.

“We partnered with the game creator to put the backing of a professional studio behind Super League Soccer,” the spokesperson wrote. “In partnership with the original game creator, Gamefam now runs the game in full and provides our live operations capabilities and brand activation expertise. The numbers continue to get better and better as we work together.”

FIFA has a rich history in video games for consoles made by major studios, and until 2022, it maintained a long-term partnership with Electronic Arts. Its breakup with EA removed FIFA from the title of EA’s hit soccer video game franchise. Afterward, FIFA president Gianni Infantino declared that “when [children play] a football simulation game, they play FIFA, it cannot be named something else.” Ahead of the men’s FIFA World Cup next summer, Infantino has been hellbent on besting EA.

FIFA worked with the studio Mythical Games on a separate, non-Roblox project that led to the release of FIFA Rivals in the Apple and Android app stores. It also has a licensing and esports deal with Konami’s eFootball, which is playable on mobile and console.

None of those endeavors, or the new FIFA Super Soccer title sponsorship, carry the same reach of EA Sports’ renamed soccer franchise EA Sports FC. Still, when taken together, they are formidable.

Overall, Roblox has a $60 billion market cap and 111.8 million average daily active users, according to a Sept. 4 financial report. Before it rebranded from Super League Soccer last week, FIFA Super Soccer averaged 1.5 million daily gameplay sessions with a duration of 11 minutes, per Gamefam, though this metric included when the same people opened the game more than once in a 24-hour period.

In the immediate wake of Friday’s name change, FIFA Super Soccer rose into the top 70 for concurrent Roblox users at 21,000, according to a spokesperson. Gamefam works with other sports organizations, including the NFL, on titles that have also made this leaderboard.

As Briceno discusses Roblox integrations with clients who ask how Gamefam’s services can lead to real-world revenue returns, he’s reminded of his own marketing work at previous career stops.

Early in a 12-year tenure at Mattel Inc., Briceno was on the other side, only YouTube was the multimedia puzzle his company was trying to solve.

“We were thinking, we’ve got to get hot,” Briceno said. “Does it drive sales? We know that TV commercials drive sales, but what are we going to do with YouTube, I don’t know if we can measure and blah, blah, blah, and all these things were happening. We said we got to invest in this, this is where the kids are. It just makes logical sense.

“It takes a while until you’re able to generate the data points and the proof points and figure out how to do it in the right way that actually drives scale or sales. … Now we are going through that process on Roblox, and we’ve seen a lot of those early data points, so it just validates what you would think is common sense.”