2026 World Cup Effect on Games

Who wins the World Cup? The world's most popular sport is having its greatest event. It is a time to revisit a race that may surprise you. If we look at mobile DAU for the top games eFootball is about to cross FC Mobile. And Dream League Soccer has found a a nice steady state at around 9.8 million DAU. FIFA's floating around 19 and eFootball's around 16 on mobile. And we look at revenue hold hold on hold on to your P&Ls. eFootball has actually overcome FC Mobile in terms of cumulative revenue.
Jesus.
For yeah, 1.9 billion to FC Mobile's 1.6. So that is pretty remarkable. We still have Dream League Soccer which is lagging so far behind. And if we break this down a little bit more and kind of look at country mixes because

when you look at football which is something we haven't talked a lot about on this podcast, one thing you need to have your sensors on about is that there's a ton of tier three that gets involved in this analysis which can really [ __ ] with your up down numbers. It can [ __ ] with your DAU. You just need to be very careful in how you do your filtering. So for instance, if we look at FC Mobile and we look at the share of their DAU, the plurality is held by Indonesia. And they also remember have a ton of regional operators for all the SKUs. And that goes for the HD version as well. You remember South Korea operates a version for the Eastern market. So that's just one thing to be aware of. But still has done remarkably well in Asia which I think people forgot particularly for eFootball. It's Asia and it's Brazil. And we think about revenue eFootball has absolutely crushed it basically on Japanese strength alone. The Japanese as we know monetize at super high rates. Remember every time we look at those annual numbers of how much the Japanese mobile gamer spends, it's some crazy [ __ ] amount and that's the same case here. They're playing eFootball

like it's a mobile gotcha game and that's really good news for Konami because one of the things they've done to actually grow the eFootball franchise, I would argue the turning point of the mobile eFootball franchise is they actually moved away from seasonal resets, which is something that you're seeing a lot more on mobile like FC mobile also did this. And so what they're doing is it's straight OVR inflation. So when you're playing some of these games, you're getting players that are in let's say 105 OVR on day zero. So it's a really accelerated progression. They're doing power inflation. They're not doing seasonal resets, which used to be huge churn points for mobile. And the other thing that's been remarkable is that eFootball has been starting to do these collabs, which you rarely see in games like FIFA. When I say collabs, I mean like anime [ __ ] collabs. They did a Yu-Gi-Oh! event. They did a Naruto Shippuden event. Captain Tsubasa. Like these are a lot of Eastern geared IPs. And what they'll do cuz it seems like an awkward integration is they'll have a footballer like let's say Neymar and then they'll

have a Naruto character behind them. So it's a special edition of the card. You're not actually getting the Naruto character. They're in-game events that are themed towards this. It looks like on the chart it doesn't do a whole lot in the short run in terms of revenue, but you have to imagine there's been some effect of all these IP integrations. At the very least, moving away from these seasonal resets seems to have been a growth cycle for both of them. Let's see how this ends up performing. You know, if we look at the Steam side, eFootball still sucks.
[laughter]
It's not even close to FC. FC is up from 300,000 DAU in the last couple days to around 400,000 DAU on Steam alone, which just shows you what this World Cup cycle is going to be. I don't think people understand how big the World Cup is in terms of these games and you'll see so many football games launching right now. I have Rematch on here. Remember, that was the one that blew up recently with reinventing some of the core mechanics. Goals. You remember Goals from our from our our Swedish friends that launched recently and I don't think it's been doing too much.
Was that crypto thing?
No, nope, they dumped they dumped the Web3 very early on.

So, it was a crypto thing. You were like, "No, no, no, it wasn't."
one point. At one point it was Web3.
It was yes. And then there was that that [ __ ] French company that was crypto football thing.
Sorare. Sorare Sorare continues.
So, Sorare. Where where is Sorare? I know they they're maybe
this client.
May may maybe a client of Phil's. Oh, they're a Web3 company. Mhm.
So, here's here's what I'd say coming around to this. I think there's a ton of insight you can get by focusing on regions. I think this is a regional story. I think that people ignore how powerful Asia is when it comes to football and what a global phenomenon this is. And congrats to Konami. Like, they really have pushed this game to the max.
And if you want to make our Turkish audience mad, you can say, "Did you guys really lose to Australia?"
[laughter]
All right. Can I Can I Can I Can I just interject one thing here?
Please.
So, it it eFootball is a [ __ ] juggernaut and FC's obviously doing quite well. And if you notice, both of them don't have any

of the FIFA branding at all, right? Like, the World Cup is like FIFA, right? And then the branding is nowhere because FIFA is completely on their ass as it comes to interactive. And the latest thing that they've released is this Delphi's Netflix FIFA World Cup, which is a [ __ ] train wreck, dude. Absolute disaster.
How do you play it? What?
How do you play it? I I tried [laughter] to play it.
Mobile version? Streaming.
[snorts]
It looked like a PS1 game, dude. And it was like it has a one out of five on VGC. They basically say the game sadly misses target like a Diana Diana Ross penalty after a comparing a rushed dev cycle to a poor graphics, slow gameplay, chunky control. Gfinity called it an abso- absolutely terrible, uninspired, insulting to the fans of a beautiful game. It's like AI slop together just to ride the World Cup hype. So, like this, like coupled with the

absolute worst trailer for interactive for FIFA World Cup from FIFA. If you see this trailer, it is literally the worst. This [ __ ] right? We didn't see a [ __ ] screenshot or a video of this game before launch. Like it was like it was unbelievable how poorly they've managed interactive. And all I have to say to FIFA is like, why the [ __ ] did you not just play ball with EA, dude? EA has all you need for this [ __ ] And yet now you're going out and doing deals with Delphi, which is like
Chris, Chris, don't hate the player, hate the game because Netflix paid for this. Nobody gets paid. Like this is not Apple Arcade where you get residuals. This is one check. I bet Netflix paid 10 million. They put in like a 30% bonus because it shipped so fast for the for the championships.
It's opportunity cost.
It fits perfectly Netflix games portfolio.
Netflix it makes sense. For Delphi it's

a [ __ ] lunacy. Like it's like why the [ __ ] are you putting yourself out there? Like this is the worst game ever.
I'm here for Delphi. I think this was a smart business move. They paid in advance. There's no residuals. Put the game into lovable. Give it to Netflix. Say thank you for 10 million dollars. See you never. This was one off. You're not going to be even around next time we make a game. So, could put your all your eggs on 007. Just keep it up.
they didn't make 007.
It's with Eidos. I know.
They negotiated the
Not Eidos, but uh but the uh the license.
They don't they don't get [ __ ] from that.
IO Interactive, yeah.
Of course this is going to happen. They've had 3 years and this is all they could come up with, a bunch of [ __ ] shite, you know, for the biggest the biggest the biggest event in the history of sports and this is what they come up with, right? This is what they're supporting it with. Meanwhile, eFootball FC all these other games are [ __ ] cleaning house, right? And they don't even have the [ __ ] brand, right? And so like they're like completely out to lunch on this [ __ ]

So, anyway, moving on. They're the I'm not chilling.
I'm I'm just saying like this is if I understand your point, I agree 100% with your point, but from the perspective of just business, they bamboozled FIFA and Netflix all at once. That's good. I applaud that.
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