Why is FIFA so popular in the USA recently?

[BrotherRool]

FIFA 14 was the 11 best selling console game in the US for 2013. It beat Bioshock, The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Arkham Origins, all of the Lego games etc.

This isn't a one off either, FIFA 13 was the 10th best selling console game in 2012 and outsold Mass Effect 3, Mario Kart 7 etc

It was beaten by Madden and NBA 2K14, but still football (soccer) isn't big at all in the USA right? So how come FIFA tends to sell well in the US?

source [http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf] (Pg 13)

Spoiler

1. GTA V
2. CoD Ghosts
3. Madden
4. Battlefield 4
5. AC IV
6. CoD Blops 2
7. NBA 2k14
8. Just Dance 2014
9. Minecraft
10. Disney Infinity
11. Fifa

 

[Muspelheim]

Presumably cultural influences from abroad. Football is really popular worldwide, and the presence of it is unavoidable. It could just be that large parts of the U.S. sport games audience decided to see what the fuss was about, and possibly liked what they saw.

Not to mention, there is an audience for football in the U.S. as well, enough to get games like FIFA a tidy bit of sales, but not enough to have a larger impact.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Maybe my fellow countrymen are starting to wake up and realize "real" football is more entertaining than baseball or our football? I've never been much of a sports fan, but I do enjoy watching (or even better, attending) a soccer match.

 

[Albino Boo]

Large numbers of Hispanic immigrants from football loving countries. I think its about 15% of the US population and rising are from Latin America

 

[nevarran]

The most popular sport in the world, it's only natural to attract some people from the states.
Also the games are good, both FIFA and Pro Evolution. The games are also a decent representation of the real thing, there's a good level of immersion there.

Football in general works very well on video games. Not much contact between the virtual players, that I think helps a lot. Once you get the ball physics right, you're half way there.

 

[Tsurani]

Pro Evolution is a fantastic game and FIFA can be but most of the time its just one of the most frustrating games I've ever played. In short I prefer Pro Evolution by a long mile.

Hispanics might be part of it but it certainly isn't the main reason fifa and soccer as a whole has grown. More exposure thanks to espn and nbc broadcasting premier league games on a regular basis has helped advertise the sport to newcomers. I used to love american football and still watch it(49ers fan since 1997) however soccer is for me by far the better sport and is so much harder to play and I think more and more people are very slowly and steadily starting to maybe realize this.

 

[balladbird]

I can't speak for others, but personally I picked up fifa 14 for a handful of reasons:

1.) I was in a non-american football-y mood
2.) there weren't exactly a bevvy of early PS4 games
3.) World cup season is almost upon us, and I wanted to get into the spirit

Honestly, I was impressed with the quality of the game. I had a ton of fun with it, probably more than I've had with any sports game other than Fight Night-Champion and the old NFL extreme game for PS1. I wouldn't mind if the games got more popular here, though I imagine it's not something I'd buy annually, since I would guess it's a madden-esque roster update, and I don't follow any of the teams I play as to begin with. XD

 

[Zetona]

Simple: football is becoming a lot more popular in America. Thanks to new TV deals and online streaming, it's easier to follow, and harder to avoid, than it's ever been. Heck, at one point during the Liverpool-Chelsea game yesterday, five of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter were related to the game. The more Americans that follow real football, the more Americans that are interested in buying a football game.

 

[PhiMed]

Immigration.

All the other reasons given in this thread are nonsense. Fans aren't being converted. They're being imported.

 

[HardkorSB]

Maybe because they like FIFA?
For example, I don't like football, I never have. It's boring to watch and frustrating to play. I also despise the whole supporter culture around it.
I do however play PES quite often (FIFA a bit less but still) because it's fun as a video game.

Also, I've noticed that half the games on that list are EA games and from what I understand, they put a ton of money into their ad campaigns so maybe that has something to do with it.
Another reason might be that FIFA (like Madden and NBA2k) is an established series with 2 decades worth of games so maybe the fanbase has grown over the years into a big number.
One more thing - today, the world is much more interconnected than it was before the internet and cultures mix a lot faster than they used to. Maybe millenials are past the whole "football isn't a North American thing" because they are constantly influenced by foreign cultures.

Or it could be, like it has been said before, that the immigrants are the ones buying these games.

 

[CaptainMidlands]

In under 16's Football was (don't know if it still is) the most popular sport played by american kids, it's at the 16+ level it falls down, a lot of kids seem to switch to American Football or Baseball or Basketball, the leading theory was (again haven't looked in to it for a while) the Scholarship system heavily favouring those 3 sports over Football

All so the David Beckham effect

 

[remnant_phoenix]

I'm inclined to think it's two-fold: the growing Hispanic population in the States and the rise of globalism exposing more people to something they may not have known/cared about before.

Just had a thought: the "hipster" culture might also have something do with it. It's "cool" to be alternative and non-mainstream. Maybe more younger people are embracing (international) football to be counter to mainstream America's cultural obsession with gridiron.