EA Sports plans to double the size of its player base over the next 5 years

Madden 22
(Image credit: EA)

EA Sports is planning to expand its player base with the goal of reaching 500 million gamers by 2026. 

General manager of EA Sports, Daryl Holt, revealed in an interview with Axios what the company plans to do in the future. Most notably, the goal is a monumental expansion that would see the EA Sports player base more than double in size.

We don't specifically know how Holt intends to accomplish this, as his phrasing throughout the interview was rather vague. Currently, EA Sports boasts a total of 230 million players; the company wants to see this number hit 500 million over the next five years.

EA Sport plans to expand

To accomplish this goal, EA Sports will be adopting "new business models, new geographies," Holt said. Additionally, these games will begin to feature more complex community interaction. Holt claims EA is "creating very much a social aspect and social networks within our games."

EA Sports currently owns some of the popular sports franchise including NFL, FIFA and UFC. The company recently acquired Codemasters, giving EA rights to popular racing titles such as F1, Grid, DiRT and more. EA even plans to jump back into golf, college football and baseball, with PGA Tour set to launch in Spring 2022.

However, EA Sports titles are frequently criticized for being copy-and-pasted each year. Holt claims, with Madden, in particular, there's "a responsibility for us to deal with craftsmanship in terms of bugs or any issues of instability.” Hopefully, this means the game will knock it out of the park (or rather, find its way into the end zone).

Momo Tabari
Contributing Writer

Self-described art critic and unabashedly pretentious, Momo finds joy in impassioned ramblings about her closeness to video games. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism & Media Studies from Brooklyn College and five years of experience in entertainment journalism. Momo is a stalwart defender of the importance found in subjectivity and spends most days overwhelmed with excitement for the past, present and future of gaming. When she isn't writing or playing Dark Souls, she can be found eating chicken fettuccine alfredo and watching anime.