SBJ Gaming: FIFA finds community on Roblox

This is a contradiction I’ve never been able to resolve: I abhor war, but I love warships (and tanks). In our visits to San Diego, I’d lose myself in watching the ships in the harbor.

Museum ships such as the USS Midway are some of my favorite places to visit when traveling (on my bucket list: the USS Texas, the only dreadnought afloat, and Japan’s Mikasa, the only predreadnought battleship left in the world). One of the most enjoyable stories I’ve ever written was how the historians at Wargaming helped the studio re-create beautiful ships lost to the past for World of Warships.

So when I read that a NASCAR driver did a burnout on an aircraft carrier’s deck to promote a video game? Well, I kinda geeked out.

Among all the layoffs, game and studio shutdowns, price increases and component shortages of the past few years, it’s always nice to receive a reminder that gaming is, indeed, fun.

Engagement has the currency of the realm in sports, and gaming has long provided a path for teams, leagues and sanctioning bodies to find fans who not only interact with what’s on the field but also what’s on the screen. But increasingly, everyone is chasing a new currency: Community.

For years, EA Sports’ FIFA series was how the soccer body decided to engage gamers and get those not already attending and watching matches or buying merch to do so. Nowadays, its video game platform of choice is Roblox and Gamefam’s FIFA Super Soccer (it was Super League Soccer before a branding change in December). Thanks to Roblox’s ubiquity, you can play it on just about any machine that plays games (consoles, PCs, smartphones, tablets ... heck, like Doom, I wouldn’t be surprised if it someday played on my fridge).

Chris Volk, FIFA’s director of gaming and esports, told me earlier this week amid the World Cup that the turn to Roblox a few years ago was about engaging with a different sort of player than those picking up EA’s game every year — they were seeking the next generation of fans. And those youngsters were increasingly turning to Roblox over console platforms, and playing with their friends in ways they hadn’t before.

“We estimate at roughly 1.8 or 2 billion gamers to the football affinity. So that naturally brings us to the questions. Where do they sit? What kinds of games do they play? And the answer is basically everything from hyper casual to triple-A and everything in between,” Volk said.

So, how did FIFA land on Roblox?

“There was one kind of vertical that was very important for us to understand. What’s the size of the opportunity for us as FIFA, but also for us as a football organization, how can we help our constituents, the member associations, to lean in and also get in front of this audience?” Volk said.

The second point: “Sports fandom usually forms between the ages of 8 and 12. I think the sweet spot is around 11. That’s a very important data point for us.”

And why soccer may have the biggest fandom of any sport around the globe, Volk said FIFA didn’t want to take that for granted. It wanted to help foster it. And where were kids spending their time? With over 160 million daily active users, it was Roblox.

Another aspect of FIFA’s gaming strategy that goes hand-in-hand with Roblox? Ditching the walled garden of publisher exclusivity. Yes, FIFA Soccer might have been on multiple console platforms, but with EA locking down the naming rights, it meant the soccer body couldn’t work with others on games.

“We’re finding the right partners, such as Gamefam in this case, and the right platforms, like Roblox in this case, for this specific cohort. We will measure the performance and see what works and what doesn’t work,” Volk said.

It’s been working with Gamefam and FIFA Super Soccer. It has over 1.1 billion gameplay sessions since its 2023 launch, averaging 1.5 million sessions a day ahead of the World Cup (stats since the tournament kicked off still need a little time to bake).

And the stat FIFA may dig the most: 74% of FIFA Super Soccer players 11-13 are footy fans.

“The latest number was around 68% of players said they definitely or probably will watch the FIFA World Cup. So that’s huge, right?” Volk said.

Some are even playing together while watching World Cup matches.

“Ultimately, Roblox has become more than gaming. It has become community,” Gamefam Chief Business Officer Ricardo Briceno said. “What you go and do in Roblox and in FIFA Super Soccer is play the game, but it is different in that you play the game with your friends. You play as yourself with other people on your team. It’s very much a social and community experience.”

Community, after all, is now the currency of the realm.

NASCAR is experiencing a landmark moment this weekend with the Anduril 250, its first race on an active military base (in this case, Naval Base Coronado on San Diego Bay).

The race’s Qualcomm circuit is already in iRacing’s simulator (and will feature in NASCAR 26), where in its first week the circuit saw players from 72 countries run 155,000 laps on the 3.4-mile, 16-turn course (NASCAR tells me this covers more than 527,000 miles, enough to circle the Earth more than 21 times).

NASCAR has a few gaming-related announcements and nuggets to share ahead of its first foray on a military base.

• Kyle Larson is the cover driver for NASCAR 26, a reveal that happened during a gathering aboard the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that’s spending its well-earned retirement as a museum ship (and on which my kids must have taken a picture of every darn rivet and bolt they came across during our visit several years ago). Larson made several burnouts on-deck (the Midway was the largest aircraft carrier in the world at one point) in the No. 5 Chevy Camaro ZL1 he drives for Hendrick Motorsports.
• Speaking of that Camaro, it’s coming to Rocket Racing in Fortnite on Saturday as part of a bundle that features liveries for eight teams: Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing, Trackhouse Racing, HaasFactory Team, Jr. Motorsports, Hyak Motorsports, Team AmeriVet and Joey Gase Motorsports.
• The Qualcomm circuit hits Driving Empire in Roblox on Friday. Like FIFA with FIFA Super Soccer, NASCAR has seen strong engagement numbers on the platform: more than 45 million players and 400 million lifetime visits.
• NASCAR is diving into Twich during Sunday’s Cup Series race. The Twitch CreatorCast is the first time it’s picked a gaming personality-driven broadcast with streamers Agent 00 and ExtraEmily.

• Our colleagues at Leaders Group market research firm Newzoo have crunched the numbers for 2025 and report that the video game industry brought in $201.6 billion in revenue last year, a 9.1% increase over last year. More remarkably: It’s the first time the industry has eclipsed the $200 billion threshold. I’m eager to dig deeper into this report to see how much sports contributed to these numbers.
• In March, Roblox announced it will be charging fees for brand integrations. This week, we found out how much, as GamesBeat reports it’ll be a CMP model based on markets.
• A nugget passed along to me from my SBJ colleague Austin Karp: Netflix has an opportunity to reach 31.2 million existing fans with its new soccer game, especially with monthly active players in EA Sports FC 26 down 5% year-over-year in May, per Ampere Analysis. But it could be a tough road to that many players, as Aftermath’s Luke Plunkett, who has covered soccer games for years at various outlets, calls FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition an “embarrassment” in his impressions piece.
• Supercell’s Brawl Stars, which has seen over a billion downloads on iOS and Android since its 2018 launch, just launched its first collaboration with a shoe brand, Adidas. It features a soccer-themed map for the World Cup and an in-game apparel and shoe collection coming Aug. 1.