FIFA And Mythical Games Deal Highlights Role Of Blockchain In Sports Gaming

The integration of blockchain technology and sports gaming continues as an international football federation partnered with a well-known crypto-based gaming studio to create a new football game for mobile users.

Football enthusiasts eagerly await the blockchain-powered free soccer game set to release next year.

FIFA Rivals

A new free-to-play mobile football game will debut in the summer of 2025. Crypto gaming firm and international football organization, Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) developed a mobile game app called the FIFA Rivals.

Reports said that FIFA Rivals will be similar to the NFL Rivals game which was also developed by Mythical Games and launched in April 2023.

Users of Apple’s iOS and Android smartphones can access the Polkadot-powered mobile soccer game.

The crypto firm said the new mobile football game will tap the Mythos blockchain technology and Polkadot network. The same technology was also used in developing the NFL Rivals game.

Today, we announced a groundbreaking partnership with @FIFAcom! 🎉

Together, we are launching @FIFARivals, an officially licensed football mobile game scheduled for release on iOS and Android.

Are you ready? ⚽ https://t.co/MymoLx8vTU pic.twitter.com/MNraVOKogM

— Mythical Games (@playmythical) November 22, 2024

Similarly, FIFA rivals will be built with the same technology and on the same Mythos blockchain.

According to the crypto gaming studio, FIFA Rivals will allow mobile gamers to manage their football clubs, saying that users can also compete against other players in “real-time” arcade gameplay.

“Build your squad, dominate the competition, and create your legacy in the newest title,” Mythical Games said.

As of today, the market cap of cryptocurrencies stood at $3.28 trillion. Chart: TradingView

Potential 100 Million Gamers

A Mythical Games executive predicted that more than 100 million gamers would be attracted to play FIFA Rivals.

The crypto gaming CEO, John Linden, explained that over 100 million FIFA Rivals gamers is possible because a comparable mobile game, NFL Rivals, has more than 6 million sign-ups from a far narrower audience.

Super proud to partner with @FIFAcom! We will take gaming and eSports to a very global level with this game! We have over 6m players and 150m games played on NFL Rivals and now we move to 100m+ gamers and tens of billions of games! @FIFARivals

Powered by Mythos… https://t.co/hLWZZxOGS1

— John Linden (@johnwastaken) November 22, 2024

Image: FIFA Rivals Teaser/BusinessWire

To contextualize this, the FIFA World Cup attracted around 5 billion people in 2022 while the NFL playoffs last year got an estimated 500 million viewers.

Blockchain And Sporting Trend

The FIFA-Mythical Games partnership is only one of the growing number of collaborations between cryptocurrency players and sporting associations, making more interactive and funnier experiences among fans.

The partnership adds to a growing trend of sporting associations partnering with blockchain gaming studios aimed at delivering fun and interactive experiences for fans.

One of the advantages of crypto-based games is that gamers can “own in-game assets and monetize them.”

The crypto gaming studio got its early success in Blankos Block Party. The company explained that it is a nonfungible token game that was transferred to Polkadot with at least 3 million monthly transactions.

The new mobile football game became a reality with the help of the Mythos Foundation launched in October 2022 which aimed to support new gamers and developers in the Mythical Games ecosystem.

Featured image from FIFA Rivals, chart from TradingView