The day has finally come.
No more generic Mickey Mouse club logos. No more Microsoft Paint football kits. No more endless downloading of graphics packs, faces, logos, kits. No more Man UFC…
On Monday the 10th of June 2024, Sports Interactive confirmed that the Football Manager game series will officially be licensed by the Premier League, a “multi-year partnership” which will see all 20 Premier League clubs officially licensed in the game for the first time in its history.
What does this mean?
This is huge. To start with, no more downloads. Though the game has always contained Premier League data in terms of player and club info, those of us who want to enjoy a fully immersive experience have long had to install multiple renditions of facepacks, kitpacks, logos, stadium images etc in order to create a truly realistic environment when managing in the Premier League - a feat which required multiple downloads each year (of varying lengths depending on size and internet speed), intensive PC memory to store thousands upon thousands of images, manual intervention in the event that your favourite Wonderkid was omitted from a particular facepack, not to mention the need to frequently keep images updated as Wonderkids grew older and their original facepacks became ever so slightly outdated in-game…
Throwback to Joe’s OG facepacks 😁
On a more serious note - what we will in fact see is far more realism in-game when it comes to the Premier League. Sports Interactive being officially licensed should open up new doors in terms of club access, data accuracy, player and staff info, backroom structures, transfer & contract details, club facilities, youth team setups - all of which have been relatively accurate in previous games however there was always that “pinch of salt” element, a virtual asterisk* on every PL club knowing that no official relationship or licensing agreement existed between the Premier League and Football Manager.
From this...
*Brighton & Man City were previously the only licensed PL clubs in FM24
To this..
Beautiful
And from this..
To this..
NO MORE MAN UFC
Furthermore - official Premier League licensing will also ensure both accuracy and an ability to keep up with an ever evolving landscape in which PL clubs play and operate; that means that any planned or implemented changes to things like VAR, Profit and Sustainability, Coefficient Data, Prize Money, League Rules etc should all not only be updated and accurate at all times in-game, but also allow Sports Interactive to plan ahead for any future changes as well as deploy updates if and when substantial events or changes do take place in the real world - again something that will foster even more realism and narrative which is what we as Football Manager enthusiasts often crave more than anything else when it comes to our save adventures.
Premier League licensing is a welcome and long overdue addition to the Football Manager series (props to all involved in making it happen 🤝), and this combined with recent updates from the studio about the future of Football Manager and the new Unity game engine make for an awesome build up and hype ahead of the release of FM25 in a few months time. What may be even more interesting is whether we will learn further as to what has enabled this licensing agreement to finally get over the line, a deal which to many would have seemed impossible to achieve in recent years - we will discuss this and much more over on the 5 Star Potential podcast in the coming weeks.
As you can tell, we are very excited..are you? Let us know over on X or in the comments below! 👇
Thanks for reading,
