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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

I read that as the FIFA organisation was changing its name.

Amazing that FIFA is now more widely known as the name of the game rather than the body that organises association football.

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Nah, just in the context of that website. It’s not BBC or NY Times. Plus it’s properly italicized there. On HN it’s out of context and could use clarification despite HN’s no editing headlines by default policy.

Even in the context of HN, a) we're more likely to be talking about video games than real-life sport b) it's a fairly safe assumption that an international governing body is less likely to rebrand in this way than a video game series.

I disagree personally. As a "young" male from Europe every time I've talked about FIFA with friends we were talking about the game (although we always liked PES more as teenagers as it felt more arcade-like...)

Disagree with what exactly? Nobody claimed that there aren’t any people here who primarily associate "FIFA" with the game.

I would argue it isn't and it's just a bad headline.

In the context of video gaming, which is that site's focus, it definitely is.

The video gaming series isn't not more widely known than the governing body otherwise EA wouldn't have paid half a billion dollars year for year just for the naming rights.

I don't know, weirdly I was today years old when I realised that FIFA [the game] was named after the football governing body. Might just be a me thing.

FIFA is the football videogame brand. Not using that name is a huge marketing change. (Like I know EA own other sports games, know their brand id and slogan, but honestly thought 'FIFA' was it's own company.)

What interests me is what would happen if FIFA the governing body try to lease their trademark to another football videogame maker -- that would be some serious market confusion, but could EA do anything about it legally? Any precedents?

Sorry to all of you who clicked because of the unclear title. I didn't thought that through.

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