Back in 1993, EA's European office had obtained the FIFA license.
The group had managed, eventually, to persuade their parent company to let them make a football game. EA was a US-centric business at the time and football had collapsed in the country, so the publisher was hesistant. In the end, the project was greenlit, with a small team in Canada tasked with making the game.
The creation of FIFA is a remarkable trans-Atlantic story, and one for another day. But from there, the series went about transforming the world of sports video games (not to mention music in games, too). It had a fierce battle with Pro Evolution Soccer, it changed things again with the birth of Ultimate Team, and it has firmly established itself as the biggest game in most countries worldwide.