February 10 – One of the world’s most popular video games, Football Manager will not have a 2025 edition after its maker Sports Interactive announced the game has been cancelled.
The Football Manager series has been released every year since 2004, and 20 years later became the most-played edition in the game’s history, reaching seven million players within 100 days.
Last year there were some teething problems with the launch of FM25 as an early release in November was pushed until March 2025.
In a statement, Sports Interactive said that “following extensive internal discussion and careful consideration” with licensor and partner Sega, it would not be running an edition this current year.
“Due to a variety of challenges that we’ve been open about to date, and many more unforeseen, we currently haven’t achieved what we set out to do in enough areas of the game,” a Sports Interactive statement, which was released at 2.34am GMT on Friday, read.
“As we approached critical milestones at the turn of the year, it became unmistakably clear that we would not achieve the standard required, even with the adjusted timeline.”
The game began in 1992 as Championship Manager and is wildly popular as a game that requires players to assume the role of a football manager. Instead of using a video-game controller, players then had the option of signing players, hiring coaching staff, and setting up the team – with the match engine essentially simulating the fixtures.
In the announcement on X Sports Interactive, Sega and FM25 apologised profusely to their legion of fans.
Contact the writer of this story, Nick Webster, at moc.l1739285087labto1739285087ofdlr1739285087owedi1739285087sni@o1739285087fni1739285087