Konami confirms that Inter and AC Milan will be exclusive to eFootball this year

videogameschronicle.com:

Konami has confirmed that eFootball will have the exclusive licence to Inter and AC Milan this season, meaning they won’t be in EA Sports FC 25.

Both AC Milan and FC Internazionale Milano (Inter) have signed full exclusivity deals for the 2024-25 season, meaning eFootball will be the only football game to feature their official branding.

While EA Sports FC has the licence for the Serie A league both teams play in, this doesn’t automatically mean it has the licence for every team in that league too.

This is best highlighted in the most recent entry, EA Sports FC 24, which doesn’t have the official branding for Serie A teams Lazio or Atalanta, due to similar exclusivity deals over at Konami.

Instead, Lazio has been named Latium and Atalanta is called Bergamo Calcio, with each getting generic club badges and original kit designs.

Players with early access to FC 25 spotted that Inter had been renamed Lombardia FC and AC Milan had become Milano FC, leading to a general belief that EA had lost the licence to both teams, a theory Konami has now confirmed.

It should be noted that when EA loses the licence for a club, that doesn’t affect its players. The FIFPro licence is a separate agreement, meaning although these teams will have generic names, kits and badges their players will all still have real names and likenesses.

While Konami’s new deal means EA Sports FC 25 will have generic alternatives for Inter, AC Milan, Lazio and Atalanta, the publisher has at least managed to secure one licence that had been missing from the game for a while.

In July, EA announced that it had signed an exclusive multi-year partnership with AS Roma, ending a dispute that had gone back as far as FIFA 21.

The team was replaced in that game with the generic Roma FC, meaning its return in EA Sports FC 25 will mark the first time in five years that the team’s real branding will be in the game.