Soccer fans, get ready! Developer Sports Interactive announced SEGA’s Football Manager will include professional women’s soccer, last week. This is the first time the teams will officially be produced by the company. Previously, mods were responsible for women’s soccer showing up in the Football Manager games. As detailed in the announcement, Sports Interactive plans to devote millions of dollars over multiple years.
Football Manager arrived on the radars of sports gamers in 2004, in cooperation with SEGA. The gameplay is unique to the genre. It focuses more on the evaluation and acquisition of players, creating competitive teams and watching the results in a simulation. It has sold over 33 million copies over the past 17 years, and shows no signs of slowing down. With the addition of women’s soccer, the scope of players could be even broader.
The decision to add women’s soccer to future Football Manager games comes at a time when the sport is taking off globally. Women’s soccer teams, in particular, are becoming more recognized in recent years. The FA, Sky Sports and the BBC announced a three-year broadcast agreement with England’s Football Association Women’s Super League starting this season and running through 2024. The agreement increases live game broadcasts on more channels. On a biggest worldwide sports stage, the Olympics, women’s soccer has taken the medal race by a storm, with the US women’s team advancing to the semifinals for the first time since 2012. This achievement does not overshadow the sport’s continued issues with pay equality.
“There’s no hiding that there’s currently a glass ceiling for women’s football and we want to do what we can to help smash through it,” said Miles Jacobson, studio director of Sports Interactive. The studio said it plans to do this by “ensuring that women’s football is represented as authentically as possible and with the level of realism and attention to detail that the series is renowned for.”
There is no word on a completion date or platforms yet, but we will keep you posted as developments happen.
Via, Polygon.com.
