Despite football (or soccer) games seeming like an impenetrable market, given Electronic Arts’ long dominance in the space with FIFA then EA Sports FC, new online game Rematch has demonstrated a huge appetite for a fresh take on the sport.

Developed by Sloclap, the studio behind acclaimed, highly intricate 2022 beat-’em-up Sifu, Rematch is a similarly involved football game where players control just a single player on the pitch in competitive 5v5 matches (with 4v4 and 3v3 casual options, too).

The third-person camera is then locked to that player, and instead of stats shaping the outcome on the pitch, everything comes down to skill, team tactics, and how players manipulate the ball. The game’s store page promises “split-second gameplay response that always feels fair.”

Like 2015’s Rocket League – an arcade-style competitive game with which it’s drawn numerous comparisons – it also makes for highly shareable replay clips on social media.

Rematch’s online beta test last weekend drew a massive 1.3 million players. Publicly available metrics suggest interest has spiked massively off the back of the beta, elevating it into Steam’s top 100 sellers 7 weeks before release on June 16.

While online-only games seem like a riskier proposition in 2025, Rematch appears to have cut through. And there are a few reasons for that.

“Well-designed games with unique spins can disrupt saturated markets,” Alinea Analytics’ Head of Market Analysis Rhys Elliott tells GamesIndustry.biz. “Rematch’s football focus ensures a built-in audience, while its arcadey mechanics make it easy to pick up and its fighting-game depth is great for the hardcore scene.”

“Sloclap’s decision to launch Rematch as a paid game might seem risky, but it’s a sound strategy for this particular title.”

Rhys Elliott, Alinea Analytics

Even though publishers are fighting over decreasing player time for liveservice games more generally, Rematch is an example of the right game finding a niche.

“In general, liveservice games are zero-sum,” Elliott says. “The attention economy is oversaturated, so when a new liveservice game succeeds, it’s usually stealing time and attention away from another one. That’s what happened with Marvel Rivals last year; it stole players away from Overwatch 2, However, there is room for new, niche multiplayer games to break through as well – just look at last year’s Helldivers 2.

“Rematch is the best of both worlds here. It is a fresh new take on a relatively untapped genre, based on the world’s most popular sport, that has come along at a time when players are beginning to get frustrated with the market leader, EA’s FC.”

Alongside EA’s games, Konami’s eFootball (previously known as Pro Evolution Soccer) is another key player in the space, and passed 800 million installs back in February. Rematch’s beta landed just before EA FC 25 got its first paid season pass, which is generating a conflicted response from its community.

“One look on Reddit or any FC comments sections signals this [frustration],” Elliott says. “Rematch’s marketing copy is genius here and addresses many FC players’ pain points directly. FC players are disgruntled at FC’s Ultimate Team mode for [allegedly] being ‘pay to win’, so Rematch emphasises fairness (‘In a level playing field, with no player stats, victory is only about player skill and tactical coordination’).

“FC players are also vocal about FC being too iterative, so Rematch underlines being a ‘new perspective on football’. And many FC players criticise FC for being too simulator-esque and slow, so Rematch’s marketing highlights ‘no fouls, no offsides, no pauses…no time to rest’.”

While the experience Rematch offers is fundamentally different to EA Sports FC – it’s only about the sport itself rather than licensed teams or leagues, which are cornerstones of EA’s football games – captivating a portion of its audience could make Sloclap’s game enormously successful.

Despite Rocket League’s enduring appeal, too, it’s never quite had an obvious successor in a similar arcade-style sport mold. Elliott highlights the likes of Destruction AllStars and Knockout City as comparable games that flamed out.

“Developers took the wrong lessons: that Rocket League was lightning in a bottle and its success cannot be replicated. However, Rematch is a new game at the right place at the right time, combining tight arcadey gameplay with easy-to-learn, hard-to-master mechanics. Rematch is almost like the football-ification of the fighting game genre,” Elliott says.

“Rematch is an incredibly well-designed game, but it also features the world’s most popular sport. All this, so far, has been a winning formula.”

Rematch is a premium game, launching for $30/£21, as well as being available on Xbox Game Pass. The beta, then, carried a certain amount of risk if it didn’t work out – but Elliott says that the game has already racked up $1 million in pre-sales on Steam alone, and is the 51st most wishlisted Steam title with just under two months to go until launch.

“It’s safe to say that Rematch will be successful when it launches,” Elliott says. “The beta’s success demonstrates that high-quality paid games – the high-quality part is important – can thrive by being transparent and letting players ‘try before they buy’. Sloclap’s beta built trust and showcased the game’s quality, mitigating skepticism about a premium price tag. Monster Hunter did something similar earlier this year.”

Influencer activity was significant around the beta, too, with some territories seeing noticeable benefits based on coverage.

“Rematch is an incredibly well-designed game, but it also features the world’s most popular sport. All this, so far, has been a winning formula.”

Rhys Elliott, Alinea Analytics

“Top influencers like iShowSpeed streamed it, as did football-focused ones like NickRTFM. Finally, streamers in Latin America, like alanzoka (7.6 million Twitch followers) and Kammet0 (2 million) also tried it. Alinea data shows that Brazil is Rematch’s number 2 market on Steam (just behind the US), so this is already having an impact.

“Football-focused creators and mainstream streamers bridged niche and broad audiences.”

Charging a premium price tag and not being free-to-play has generated some discussion, with Sloclap itself standing by the decision in a conversation with PC Gamer. “I never considered free-to-play,” said creative director Pierre Tarno, who emphasised his belief that the path to commercial success is simply “to just make a very good game”.

Tarno’s line of thinking appears to be working out so far, and Elliott agrees. “Sloclap’s decision to launch Rematch as a paid game might seem risky, but it’s a sound strategy for this particular title. Not every multiplayer game needs to be free to play, and only a select few teams have the experience and money to develop a liveops content treadmill that free-to-play gamers expect. Not every team is as well funded as Fortnite’s Epic Games and as efficient as Marvel Rivals’ NetEase.

“That’s why I think the blanket critique of ‘Why wasn’t this free-to-play!?” is frankly lazy and a tell of someone who doesn’t understand the games market. Launching free-to-play isn’t a magic bullet. It can actually be the death knell of games like this one, even good ones (look at MultiVersus). Halo Infinite couldn’t even pull it off, despite launching to massive critical acclaim.”

Sloclap will support in-game purchases in Rematch, too, so it’s not wholly dependent on sales.

Besides, Elliott points to another more recent comparison for Rematch, where charging a premium price for a specific flavour of multiplayer experience ended up being the right call.

“Rematch’s traction so far mirrors Helldivers 2’s breakout – also a premium game – and is proof that niche, polished, mechanically smart multiplayer games can disrupt saturated markets where innovation is slow,” he says.

“Alinea data shows that Helldivers 2 has sold almost 12 million copies on Steam alone and generated Steam revenues of over $350 million. However, its content treadmill and liveops has floundered a little since launch. Would Helldivers 2 have been as much of a success for PlayStation if it launched free-to-play? I don’t think it would have. For similar reasons, I think Rematch launching free-to-play is the right move.”

“I bet the M&A departments of big publishers – and Epic Games in particular – are following Rematch very closely…”