Deliver fan engagement, including through eFootball, and invest in digital technology and Artificial Intelligence for the next generations

The harnessing of technology for the modernisation and continual relevance of football in its societal surroundings was a key tenet of the FIFA President’s Vision 2020-2023 and, in the first half of the current mandate, momentum in this field has gathered pace significantly. This has taken the form of a wide range of strategic partnerships enabling connections with esports and gaming communities as well as strategically revising technology used on the field of play and support for technological structures around them.

Less than a fortnight before Gianni Infantino was re-elected FIFA President in Kigali, Rwanda, The IFAB’s Annual General Meeting in London approved the testing of a new approach to the use of replay technology. Football Video Support (VS) was thus born in response to several requests also received by FIFA from those member associations that cannot fully implement the video assistant referee (VAR) system owing to limitations of human and financial resources, especially where insufficient cameras exist in standard competition coverage.

VS is fundamentally different to the VAR system because there arre no video match officials and the decision to request a review is the responsibility of the team’s head coach, or of the senior team official present in the technical area. It broadens the possibilities for the use of technology across a wider cross-section of the global football family, complementing VAR systems that are already implemented in over 200 individual competitions, spanning 65 member associations and five confederations. Having been tested at the Blue Stars / FIFA Youth Cup in Zurich in May 2024, the systems were further trialled at both the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup Colombia 2024, where a total of 78 reviews took place, and the FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup Dominican Republic 2024 (59 reviews). 

The communication of VAR decisions in itself has been the focus of some refinement during the first two years of these Strategic Objectives. In order to make decisions more understandable and transparent to live audiences in the stadium, referees announced the results of their deliberations over the public address systems at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, following successful trials at both the FIFA Club World Cup in Morocco and FIFA Under-20 World Cup Argentina 2023. 

As well as modernising the game for the fan through technology, FIFA also now collects and owns official and validated data for all FIFA World Cup qualifying matches for the 2026, the first time that has been the case. A FIFA Stadium Data Collector attends all 905 matches in qualification for the biggest FIFA World Cup ever, reducing dependence on manual input and written submissions and improving efficiencies through digital deliveries following validation of the details of each fixture with the appointed Match Officials at the venue.

Even from the vantage point of the elite level of the planet’s most popular sport, FIFA observes and comprehends the need to remain relevant for a new generation that has different habits and consumes media in different ways than their predecessors. That has been the inspiration for several landmarks in the gaming sphere during this reporting period as FIFA leverages gaming as a source of inspiration for new participants in the sport.

More than just a stepping stone, the prize fund for the FIFAe Finals in Saudi Arabia in July 2023 was bolstered to USD 3 million (from USD 1.2 million) in recognition of the combined power of football and gaming together. Since then, two editions of FIFAe World Cup have taken place on both mobile and console as KONAMI’s eFootball joined a roster of partners alongside Rocket League and Football Manager. Furthermore, new global communities joined the FIFAe ecosystem when twenty managers and one assistant lined up for the FIFAe Next Gen event in Liverpool in August 2024.

With football viewing patterns ever-evolving and in different ways around the world, the importance of the FIFA+ platform has already increased over the first two years of this strategic direction, with more than 80 of FIFA’s member associations onboarded for their fans to have unparalleled access to content from around the world in one place. These unique individual platforms give international fans the chance to celebrate the history of their country whilst simultaneously opening the door to connectivity to more live and contemporary action than ever before.