Iconic football league FIFA is partnering with North Carolina’s Epic Games to develop a new international eSports competition built around Epic’s vehicular soccer game Rocket League. 

FIFA’s eSports division will invite 16 countries to participate in Rocket League‘s inaugural FIFAe World Cup, including the US, France, Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and England. Each nation will field three players and one substitute to pilot the game’s RC-inspired vehicles, with players determined by the results of a series of qualifying Rocket League tournaments that will be hosted on the FIFA.GG platform. 

This announcement comes in the wake of FIFA’s 25-year licensing partnership with game developer Electronic Arts ending last year. EA, which previously published FIFA’s video games and oversaw its online competitions, now has an EA Sports FC game series of its own and is building a new eSports football tournament to compete with the FIFAe World Cup. 

Last year’s edition of the Cup attracted more than 55,000 viewers on peak across YouTube and Twitch, and they collectively watched more than 700,000 hours of the tournament, according to analytics platform Esports Charts. By comparison, the 2023 Rocket League World Championship series had a peak viewership of 468,000 and generated more than 9.5 million hours of watch time. 

Since its launch in 2016, Rocket League has built up a player base of more than 60 million registered users. The IP and its developer (Psyonix) were acquired by Epic Games for an undisclosed amount in 2019.