Real Madrid is so popular, Real Madrid vs. Real Madrid outranks nearly every other matchup in EA Sports FC 25

pcgamer.com:

Last year saw EA finally transition from its long-running FIFA series of licensed football games towards its own upstart competitor. Except EA Sports FC wasn't so much an upstart as the moneybags incumbent, and the same yearly upgrade alongside a marketing blitz that saw it plastered across seemingly every football ground saw the audience move over more-or-less seamlessly: EA Sports 24 sold slightly fewer units than 2023's FIFA 24, but ultimately made a lot more money.

EA Sports FC 25 launched in so-called early access (read: pre-order bonus) on September 27, and the publisher's now released a bunch of stats covering the game's first 25 days. Irritatingly this stat dump avoids some of the key metrics such as, y'know, how many people bought the thing, and instead offers up plenty of meaningless fluff about 4.3 billion goals scored and 1.7 billion matches played. But there are some gems in the mud.

Spain's Real Madrid are the most-selected men’s football team, while rivals FC Barcelona are the most-selected women’s football team. The El Clásico and Women’s Clásico match between Real Madrid and Barcelona unsurprisingly proved the most popular matchup in both categories. The real fun comes in the top three, though:

Yep, that's Real Madrid taking up four of six places in the most-chosen men's team. If they're not playing Barcelona or current European Champions Man City, who else is there to play but oneself? The story is slightly different in the women's game, which I suspect is down to the prominence achieved by clubs in the women's English Premier League.

It's all just personal preference of course, but I do find it funny that, when you can choose almost any prominent club in the world to play as or against, so many folk are just going for the Madrid mirror match. I guess it's too close to call.

«It’s been a month since we invited the world to play EA Sports FC 25 and the community response has been amazing, with nearly 300 million matches played of our new 5v5 Rush