With the rumours of EA abandoning the FIFA brand due to massive licensing costs and the talks of EA preparing to sell itself to some other company, it makes me wonder what's going to happen to the FIFA name. I'm sure EA Football will sell well, but it was the FIFA name and all that comes with it what makes it recognisable for most casuals, who make the vast majority of the users.

What's going to happen to the license? Will someone else buy it? Will EA buy it again in a couple of years when they have managed to drive the price down? Or we will see no FIFA branded game for many years?

I think they will get a new buyer
Or beg EA to take them back once they realise their bottom line has gotten worse off.

Edit: Mario Strikers. Letsgo!

You get a Soulsborne Fifa ans From Soft gets the license

Hopefully someone else will buy the license and thus drive competition.

After FIFA 23.. and the split I can't see EA coming back any time soon. Unless FIFA drastically lowers its price.. its dead.

No one else will pick up the license since there are no companies have any experience in delivering football (or soccer) besides maybe Konami (lol) and the risks involved and they'd have to contend with EA Sport's FC; who, still have rights to use players and club for licenses. For an investment for a name simply isn't worth it.

I'm sure lots of companies are interested in the license, but it sounds really expensive, so I'm not sure actually willing to pay for it. There's also the issue of actually developing games using the license. I suspect we might be without official FIFA games for a while, but sooner or later someone will probably pick up the license.

Hopefully pro evolution can get more licensing rights.

I'd be shocked if they made the Lego FIFA game, even if it makes sense. If EA doesn't want to pay for the license, how is Lego going to pay it for a title that will attract a much smaller crowd...

Don't know if there is a single publisher who would want to pay the hefty licensing costs, but I could see the license sold partly to smaller developers to make for example an official mobile game or maybe even something like Football Manager could be rebranded as FIFA Manager.

BTW they already mentioned what they want to do:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/05/fifa-announces-plans-to-release-ea-sports-fc-rival-and-more

I think several developers and companies will purchase rights to parts of the license. Not that many can afford the full fee, nor do most have any experience creating anything that properly uses the FIFA license. I think that FIFA will be considerably worse off in this decision than EA if I'm honest. Refusing continued partnership with the one party that can implement the license well enough is probably a big mistake from their end.