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FIFA 18 and Madden esports hits 18 million players, up 75%

Electronic Arts said that nearly 18 million players engaged in competitive gaming — aka esports — in FIFA 18 and Madden NFL 18, up more than 75 percent from a year ago.

Those results show that esports is gathering momentum in EA’s universe, as it is in the rest of the industry. (EA refers to esports as competitive gaming to include non-celebrity amateur competitions as well as traditional esports).

Global esports revenues will grow 38 percent to $906 million in 2018 and further grow to $1.65 billion by 2021, according to a report on esports by market researcher Newzoo.

EA made the announcement as part of its fourth fiscal quarter earnings report on Tuesday. EA also said that the total audience for EA Sports franchises to date has grown to nearly 90 million players on current generation game consoles.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.