Together In Electric Dreams: How music became the heart of EA Sports FC

“Me and A$AP Rocky just clicked,” says Raphaella Lima, global music marketing director at video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA). “I met him when I was just coming off maternity leave, so I wasn’t drinking, and he’d been in the dentist’s chair all day, so he wasn’t drinking either. But we sat in the hotel, and he thought, ‘You know what? I f**k with this girl! Let’s go to the studio.’ So, my partner and I went, we heard his music, and we thought, ‘This guy is incredible.’” 

Less than a year later in 2013, the then-rising star appeared in his first commercial after Lima convinced EA bosses that a new artist could be exactly what they needed to boost the US profile of the football gaming series that was called FIFA until 2023. “What I loved about that moment was that it showed the power of new artists. When the campaign went out and the conversations were happening, half of them were being driven by Rocky! It’s really cool to have that moment and also grow with him on another campaign.” 

And then there’s the time she found herself travelling through New York in a car with Drake, after an activation for FIFA 2014 saw the rapper bring the Big Apple to a standstill. “Fast-forward to the game coming out, and I got a call from his team telling us that ‘You guys are opening doors in countries that just wouldn’t have us before.’ That’s incredible, right? It really shows the impact of the platform on a global scale and the credibility it has to bring something unique and new that people are ready to take on.”  

Since 2004, Lima has been responsible for countless moments like these in the game, which has been called EA SPORTS FC since the most recent edition. Millions of players across the world speak of how the game’s soundtrack informed and expanded their musical horizons, while others talk of its inherent nostalgia and the way it takes people back to a specific moment in their lives every time they hear a song that featured in the game. For this writer, it’s an inability to hear LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Daft Punk Is Playing at My House’ without being transported back to hours spent playing FIFA ’06 as a teenager on the PlayStation 2.  

From a personal perspective, there’s been a hell of a journey for Lima, too. She grew up in Vitória, Espírito Santo, in south-eastern Brazil, and says she never quite realised how a childhood passion for both football and gaming could combine perfectly. “One of my first memories is the World Cup 1986,” she says. “My dad would fill up the house with uncles, family friends, and we’d have a real party. You’d get into the game and eventually there’s a goal, but you don’t hear a peep.  

“I’d go into the room to understand what was going on and it felt like a funeral after the other team had scored. There were people crying and it was at that moment I realised the impact it had in our lives.” 

Lima’s interest in gaming developed at a young age. “Truthfully, that came because I was from the hood and my mum tricked me into changing my bike for a gaming master system so she could get us off the streets,” she reflects. “That was the beginning of it, but it was only in college that I had the understanding that there was actually an industry behind all of this.” 

Now, 20 years later, Lima is ready to do it all again with EA SPORTS FC 2025. 

What can we expect from the music in EA SPORTS FC 2025? 

I think as a brand we sit at this unique intersection where culture, entertainment and sports come together with 200 million players and a really young audience that’s heavily engaged in the world of football today. We have a very captive audience. 

So, when you bring music to that, which is a magical thing in our everyday lives, we see the opportunity there. Each year, we find ourselves in this beautiful position to curate a soundtrack that truly has an impact globally, both in football and in the music industry. We continue to push the innovation in the space through partnerships, promoting undiscovered new talent, new music and championing cultures from all around the world. So that’s the exciting part. 

When you play EA SPORTS FC, who’s your go-to team?  

I gotta play with Real Madrid and Brazil. I’ve played with Brazil forever and it actually got to a point that I got mad when Brazil wasn’t that great because I wanted to stay as good in the game! That was around the 2014 World Cup. But this job allowed me to have a full-circle moment when the World Cup happened in Brazil, because it was something I’d been manifesting. I found myself having access to these Brazil games, front and centre, and, my God, I got to live every emotion in my life. 

I also found myself cheering for Germany in the final, even though they’d beaten us, because I couldn’t support Argentina! 

Tell me about the impact of EA SPORTS FC in 2024. 

Well, we have 200 million players right now in this game, and last year alone we logged five billion hours of people playing it. To be able to put a song in that mix, that vision was there all along. When I started 20 years ago, I remember evangelising the industry and the power of what this could be.  

We created this map where we said a song will be placed in this game and it will get over a billion plays. No number one record in the world gets that! This was based on where we were 20 years ago, and now we have partners like Spotify, so these songs can live in a world where people are consuming music on a day-to-day [basis]. We are one of the most engaged-with playlists on that platform. We launch a new playlist every single year and we will break over 100,000 followers just like that. 

It has a massive impact on the artists. 

Every year, I hear back from artists who tell me that their streams are up by 500 per cent, and it isn’t just the small artists either. You have an artist like Glass Animals, and we’ve been there from the start with them. It’s such a special story with them, too, as a fan. I remember it was April of the pandemic and I’m listening to [Glass Animals album] Dreamland in my backyard from beginning to end, and an hour later, I thought, ‘What just happened?!’ Our team called each other, and we decided that it could be any song from that album, but ‘Heat Waves’ was the track. To hear Dave Bayley and the band tell us that we brought life into the album, that’s really special. To work with artists you love so much and [to] have an impact is really special. 

One of the great things about the music on EA SPORTS FC — and FIFA games before that —  is the ability to open up artists to people who wouldn’t necessarily access their music.  

That was part of our approach when we started it. The idea of game music was very pigeonholed and niche and that was probably my favourite part of the vision that [worldwide executive and president of music for Electronic Arts] Steve Schnur had, to open this space up. And that goes back to 2004 when one of my favourite placements was ‘Já Sei Namorar’ by Tribalistas, and I remember Steve saying, “This is a great song, and it needs to be heard.” That’s really it, right? The idea of utilising the connection we have with such an extensive player base, the opportunity to give them something new, the opportunity to add to the entertainment experience that this game provides.  

This is the other thing: our soundtracks have become a part of the game experience and that is expected. Every year, it’s a case of: here are the 100 artists that you’re gonna fall in love with. The game has that ability to get you to understand and digest a new sonic palette. 

What can you tell us about this year’s artists? 

You gotta be ready! I’m really excited about J Balvin; he’s coming back. We had history because when we were bringing our VOLTA mode to market, we had an opportunity to connect with an artist and a sound to bring something new to the streets. We aligned on the fact that we wanted either Major Lazer or Diplo to take part, and we were able to extract a few beats from [Major Lazer’s] hard drive which he eventually agreed that we could put out in the trailer. It was a great beat, and I was with Major Lazer, and we suggested turning that beat into a song for the soundtrack. That song became ‘Qué Calor’, which was a big hit for them. 

We’ve got Glass Animals again, too, but my latest obsession from Nigeria is Omah Lay. We heard ‘Holy Ghost’ last year right as we locked the soundtrack, and we just knew we had to get him involved! 

And obviously as the Brazilian in me, there’s one that’s really special — a huge Brazilian DJ called Alok. He’s so massive, but we had the same philosophy and he decided to use his platform to bring forth this really special project called The Future Is Ancestral, which uses native Brazilian singers and a Brazilian band. This thing can be niche and tribal, but his musical sensibilities can take it to this more global space. I was in London when it came out and I couldn’t skip a song on it. I’m very happy we were able to get a song from it into the game this year. 

You’re something of a trailblazer. You must be incredibly proud of what you’ve achieved in breaking glass ceilings in what can sometimes be a male-dominated industry.  

I pinch myself every day. As a little girl, [I was] looking in a mirror while living in the hood and wondering what life might be like in that mirror if this wasn’t the setting. I spent so much time on that. The other day I just thought, ‘Oh my God, all the things you imagined to that mirror really is life now.’ It exposes the beautiful magic of what happens when what you put out comes back to you. Music is just my life; football is the life, and music was the soundtrack to all these things. It was the language from very early on that allowed me to break into a new crew of friends. That position is a dream come true. 

And finally, the sheer nostalgia of EA SPORTS and FIFA games. How does it feel knowing you’ve been the soundtrack to so many people’s lives? 

It probably is the biggest statement and career highlight of what we’ve been able to do. What I love is the sonic brand we’ve created at the end of the day, because to me it’s a sonic feeling. Because you bring in any genre, any language, and it’s a song that evokes a great emotion. I love [it] when people start debating about soundtracks. It’s the passion that people have behind it… I love it because, truthfully, I don’t believe there is a formula, and it just comes from the heart. It’s perfect.