The Business of Pop Culture Ep 5: FIFA's AI Footballers

Published 14 April 2023

Authors
Christian Ward
Julia Errens
5 min read

The Business of Pop Culture is a weekly video series from Stylus exploring the intersection of entertainment, media, online culture and consumer engagement. In each episode, we analyse a key pop culture trend from the perspective of branding, marketing and consumer engagement. We take a deep dive into the topic, put it into a wider pop-cultural context, examine the consumer drivers catalysing it and discuss the implications for current and future brand engagement.

This week, we are highlighting Fifa’s mobile game, AI League, which lets players collect, trade and train artificial-intelligence-powered footballers to compete against others in four-on-four matches.

This move into casual gaming combines active gameplay, spectatorship and virtual collectibles, with clear inspiration taken from the huge and growing fantasy sports market. Check out Future Sports Fandoms for more.