Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson said EA “reignited momentum” for EA Sports FC in the fourth fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2025, after a “temporary slowdown” in fiscal Q3.
The January gameplay update – which was the biggest live service update EA ever launched in FC —
combined with outreach to the player community and our Team of the Year event, “resulted in a true brand building moment with our fans,” he said. Feedback improved and the cadence of flow-up updates helped the momentum continue.
That helped net bookings came in well above expectations with player engagement up double digits following the January update. EA’s engagement with fans returned to normal levels and ended the quarter up. EA’s stock price rose 5.45% to $162.96 in after-hours trading.
Mobile growth helped by web store
FC Mobile also exceeded expectations with engagement and acquisition up year over year as a result of our continued focus on hyperculturalization, a web store launch last quarter driving more meaningful net bookings, and a successful Team of the Year program, he said.
That comment about a web store launch is significant, as Epic Games won an antitrust court battle with Apple about whether game companies can promote inside their App Store apps that they have lower prices off the App Store. Web shops can add a lot of traction to mobile games, as they mean the game maker no longer has to pay up to 30% of revenue to Apple or Google.
Even as it does this, EA also works closely with the platforms. Wilson said FC Mobile will play a key role in deepening player engagement starting with the recently-announced partnership with Apple and MLS around integrated streaming and cross-platform fandom with the first match streaming next week.
EA Sports FC Mobile new player acquisition and daily active users were up over 20% year over year. FC Mobile remains a key strategic initiative to grow the reach of the soccer franchise.
“A great demonstration of how we’re growing our audience through FC Mobile is the fact that the four largest mobile markets, including territories across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, are different from our four largest HD markets,” Wilson said.
Not only is the soccer game business regularly the top video game in the western hemisphere, it is also one of the largest sports entertainment platforms in the world, he said.
EA’s American football games across Madden NFL and College Football across console and PC grew double digits. Hours played were up 68%, leading to net bookings of over $1 billion dollars — up over 70% year over year, Wilson said.
This quarter, American football continued to perform well-beyond the college season-ending national championship in January and the Super Bowl in February, Wilson said.
Post-season engagement and monetization continue to play a more meaningful role as players and fans look to EA for their sports entertainment in the off-season. For example, the recent NFL Draft was a prime opportunity to continue to connect Madden NFL and College Football through high value, timely content to generate ongoing engagement, connect with fans year round, and drive player retention as EA heads head into the next fiscal year.
In addition, UFC 5, F1 24 and NHL 25 delivered consistent quality and deepened player connection across the portfolio. The EA SPORTS App, currently in soft launch with La Liga in Spain, is delivering positive early indicators of engagement and retention reinforcing the vision to grow into the world’s leading interactive sports platform.
“Looking ahead, we plan to broaden our reach into additional markets with new strategic partners, while steadily enhancing the app experience through expanded features and more personalized content,” Wilson said. “Our focus remains on driving daily engagement, fostering community interaction, and supporting long-term global growth.”
In an analyst call, Wilson said, “We have a big ambition around building the largest football community in this country and really being a leading digital football fan platform through interactive entertainment. The launch of college football this past year was just the first step.”
Wilson added, “And again, I acknowledge that there was almost certainly up demand, having not launched the franchise for 10 years. But I’d also say, given the quality of the game that our team built, given the level of engagement that we had from the fan base.”
He said the teams are building a deeper connection between college and the NFL game this year, as well as building out much bigger ecosystems around the combined franchise in future years.
“We will continue to grow this business in line with the growth of the sport and benefit from the ongoing uptake of young fans with interactive
entertainment,” he said.
Non-sports entertainment
While FY2025 was the biggest net bookings year ever for EA ports, it was also good for the entertainment pipeline, as Wilson calls the rest of the company. The Sims hit double-digit year-over-year growth in net bookings in Q4 on the game’s 25th anniversary.
EA got fans to reengage through a new expansion pack – Businesses & Hobbies — the return of The Sims 1 and 2, and the release of creator-made kits. This marks the best fourth quarter net bookings performance for the franchise ever and paves the way for the continued expansion of The Sims universe over the next several years, Wilson said.
As for Split Fiction, the new IP from Josef Fares’ Hazelight Studios sold four million copies, which CFO Stuart Canfield said was twice the expectations. Even so, EA laid off people during the quarter at Respawn and other parts of EA as a result of “realigning resources, managing costs, and focusing on our biggest opportunities.”
In FY26, EA is launching two of our most iconic franchises, Skate (which EA spells skate.) and Battlefield.
Built as a dynamic live service, Skate is designed to grow alongside its community, offering new ways to express creativity, style, and progression over time, Wilson said. Early access is coming in the fiscal year 2026.
Battlefield testing
Turning to Battlefield, EA is taking a modern, player-first approach to building, testing and marketing this next level experience. Through Battlefield Labs — the biggest playtesting initiative in franchise history — EA is engaging players earlier and more meaningfully than ever before, testing at scale, and validating core gameplay experiences, Wilson said.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have weighed into this and really given us feedback that are going to help us tune and balance this incredible scale game. And as we now move into the next phase, we’ll start to open up to a wider audience, bringing in more across North America and Europe, and starting with Asia,” Wilson said in the analyst call.
Through play sessions with a core group of Battlefield players across Europe and North America, EA has completed thousands of hours of gameplay, and the response has far exceeded expectations: over 600 thousand players have signed up for Labs to date, alongside an amazing 350 million views of Battlefield
content since our announcement.
“We remain firmly on track for a FY26 release, with a major global reveal later this summer,” he said. Thankfully, Rockstar Games said GTA VI is launching on May 26, 2026, well out of range of Battlefield.
Wilson said this about AI: “I also want to take a moment to talk about how AI is powering our future. We view AI as a powerful accelerator of creativity, innovation, and player connection. Across our teams, we’re investing in new workflows and capabilities to integrate AI to enhance how we build, scale, and personalize experiences — from dynamic in game worlds, to delivering authentic athlete and team likenesses at incredible scale.”
He added, “Our developers are using AI to push the boundaries of what’s possible in design, animation, and storytelling, helping us deliver deeper, more immersive gameplay. This is about amplifying the power of this technology to unlock new possibilities for the future of interactive entertainment.”
Canfield said that fiscal year 2025 results included net bookings of $7.36 billion, down 1%. The American football games surpassed $1 billion in net bookings, up 70% from a year ago. That growth was offset by softness in Apex Legends.
Full game net bookings was $2.02 billion, up 1%, driven by strength in EA Sports College Football 25 and new blockbuster releases including Split Fiction and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which offset prior-year contributions from Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and softness in EA Sports FC 25 full game sales.
Live services net bookings were $5.34 billion, down 2%, reflecting an approximate four point headwind from Apex Legends in addition to an approximate three point headwind from the December and January softness in FC Ultimate Team. These headwinds were partially offset by the strength of American Football.
EA has lined up Skate and Battlefield for launch during the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2026. That’s on top of releases including EA Sports F1 25 on May 30, and four other EA Sports titles for the quarter ending September 30 — EA Sports College Football 26, EA Sports Madden NFL 26, EA Sports NHL 26 and EA Sports FC 26.
The macro envrionment
One encouraging thing: Wilson and Canfield didn’t blame headwinds created by tariffs or a tough economy for anything.
Wilson did get a question about the macroeconomic environment and if that would soften demand. Would he pursue higher price points and examine pricing power for the IPs?
He said that the company’s biggest franchises have performed well over the decades, though they have no been immune macro events. But he said the brands have been “incredibly resilient” even in tough macro times.
“Typically, we’ve seen our biggest franchises perform very well, and there’s really good reason for that. Entertainment is a fundamental human need. It’s been witnessed at the beginning of time. At this point in time, our form of entertainment is the first form of entertainment for much of the global population, and that grows every year as our industry continues to grow,” Wilson said. “And we represent incredible value. When you think about the amount of money a game cost the amount of money it costs to extend and enhance that over the course of 365 days, it still represents incredible value to get that entertainment fix.”
He said EA believes it can continue to deliver “incredible entertainment experiences, even in a world where we may not be immune from a meaningful macroeconomic downtime. We do believe that we will be resilient, and we do believe that we can grow over the course of time through that in terms of pricing power.”
Asked about GTA VI’s delay, he said, “I’m not sure I can comment on the rest of the industry and their launches or launch timing, other than to say typically today, games take many years to build and develop, and it’s unlikely that if you weren’t already ready to launch in this window, it may be hard to get ready and take advantage of what might be otherwise a less competitive window that we may have anticipated earlier relative to Battlefield. What we’ve said all along as we’ve been building towards a window that we thought made the most most sense of Battlefield, but we wouldn’t launch into a window that we thought truncated the value that we’ve invested into the franchise, or the value that we think our players will derive from it once they jump in and start playing. I think now, without going too far, we believe that window is clearer than it was before, and we feel very good about launching Battlefield” and other games.
Canfield Battlefield was built over more than four years by multiple game studios. EA has carried that cost over the years, and soon the payoff from that investment will come.
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