EA Sports brings its FC Pro football esports to mobile across the Middle East

EA Sports is taking its football esports mobile. The company is bringing FC Pro — the competitive arm of its football franchise, formerly FIFA and now EA Sports FC — to smartphones across the Middle East and North Africa, pitching football esports “in the palm of players’ hands.”

The strategic read is straightforward. MENA is one of the world’s fastest-growing gaming markets, and it is overwhelmingly mobile-first. Anchoring a competitive FC Pro ladder to phones rather than consoles dramatically lowers the barrier to entry: you no longer need a PlayStation or Xbox to climb the ranks, just the device already in your pocket. For a region that is young, enormous and football-obsessed, that is a large addressable audience for EA to formalize into a competitive scene.

It also fits EA’s longer arc. Since rebranding FIFA to EA Sports FC in 2023, the company has been rebuilding its competitive ecosystem under the FC Pro banner as the successor to the old FIFAe circuit. Extending that structure to mobile in a high-growth region is a logical next step — and a bet that the future of football esports looks less like a living-room console and more like a phone on a commute.