Stretch or separate? Football Manager’s brand architecture dilemma 

When a dominant game brand like Football Manager hits nearmax market penetration, the biggest growth challenge becomes how to expand without alienating your core user base. This blog explores how brand architecture – including launching a sister brand – could have offered a safer route for growth and risk mitigation. 

By Dan George, Senior Director, Head of Brand, Insights and Strategy 

You’ve conquered your competition and saturated the market. But still you need to grow. What do you do? This is the question games developer Sports Interactive (SI) faced with its hugely successful Football Manager series.  

Its player database is so respected that it’s even used by some professional teams to supplement their own scouting efforts. So it’s no surprise that SI has faced little serious competition within the niche football management sim category for about 20 years.

 Ever since a split with publisher Eidos with whom it used to create the pioneering Championship Manager series (long story short, SI kept the product, rebadging it as Football Manager, Eidos kept the old Championship Manager brand and the product won the player base), Football Manager has been the undisputed first choice for anyone wanting a true-to-life football management simulation.  

But, with almost 20 million players online for the last edition, FM24, it appeared that market saturation had been reached among the hardcore player base. To grow further, SI needed to broaden the net and capture casual players from a much bigger potential customer set: football fans of any persuasion.   

The dilemma of dominance     

SI leaned into the equity built up in its Football Manager brand – one of the most recognizable brands in football gaming with an excellent reputation – by retooling the in-game experience to make it more accessible to new, more casual, players. Out went the janky graphics and spreadsheet-like presentation of player data. In came a shiny new match engine and a user interface inspired by social media.  

So far, so good. Except not quite. This was much more complex than a simple paint job, requiring a complete overhaul of the game’s backend systems. SI repeatedly delayed the 2025 edition of the game and then scrapped it entirely. That meant a huge hit to company revenues and an even bigger blow to the goodwill built up over the years with loyal customers who’d grown accustomed to annual releases that keep player data up-to-date.  

But worse was yet to come. After a long wait, the new edition, FM26 launched last week – but not to universal acclaim. Critics’ reviews have been mixed, stating that while some tweaks such as better graphics and additions like the inclusion of women’s teams for the first time have potential, the game feels incomplete and beset by bugs.   

Player reviews have been even more damning, with gaming marketplace Steam characterizing reviews on the platform as “mostly negative” a few days after launch – the updated UI proving a particular problem given it means information that used to be at players’ fingertips is now a couple of extra clicks away. 

Of course, it’s possible that with a few patches to fix the bugs, and time for players to get used to the new UI, FM26 could yet prove the best Football Manager yet. But until then it’s undeniable that the brand has been damaged, goodwill with existing customers has been spent and that there’s no guarantee that an influx of new, casual football fans will replace any who stop playing.  

When the fix breaks the formula      

I don’t mean to put the boot in. Football Manager remains by far and away the biggest beast in its category and will almost certainly bounce back. But I do wonder whether a slightly different approach to brand architecture might have mitigated much of the damage. 

Rather than trying to stretch the Football Manager brand to capture a new cohort of potential players, might it have been wiser for SI to create a subsidiary or even totally separate standalone brand to target the casual segment of the audience, while keeping the main Football Manager offer unchanged for simulation purists?  

Of course, there are some good reasons why SI may have taken the route it took. Firms certainly shouldn’t create new brands just for the sake of it – it’s a big expense, means spreading marketing (and in this case product development) budgets more thinly and can dilute brand equity gains when things are going well. And if a new offering is going to make a big technological leap forward, it’s important that the main brand is seen to keep up.

But on the other hand, this was by far the biggest change to the Football Manager product in decades. And customers weren’t crying out for it. Saturating the market isn’t a problem, it’s an achievement and, as the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke… 

And no brand can be all things to all people. That’s why P&G owns so many detergent brands. It knows that only some of us will be attracted to Ariel. Others will buy Bold. And those who don’t might turn to Tide.  

The point is that each brand is positioned slightly differently, to target slightly different audience segments for mass penetration. And if Bold is subject to a product recall, revenues from Ariel, Tide and wider P&G’s laundry care offer are insulated from the effects as negative associations are contained by the Bold brand. 

Perhaps the same logic applies here. Instead of reinventing the wheel, could SI have built a new vehicle? Football Manager could have continued to serve a complex simulation to a devoted hardcore customer base while a new sister brand tested the waters with a broader crowd. That way, capturing the casuals wouldn’t come at the expense of alienating the old guard.  

I’m sure this isn’t the end of the road. Football Manager has achieved such a dominant position that it can afford a misstep or two. But the lesson still stands: opportunity brings risk and the right brand architecture can prove invaluable in helping you reap rewards or defend against danger.  

And growth isn’t always about reinventing what works. Sometimes it’s about knowing when you’ve got a winning hand and playing it well.  

             

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Key takeaways 

Why can stretching a successful brand be risky?

Because even with strong brand equity, drastic changes may alienate the core audience and damage the reputation built over years.

When should you consider creating a sister or separate brand? 

When your main brand serves a loyal, specialist audience and you wish to target a new, more casual segment without compromising the original offering. 

How does brand architecture support growth and protect your main brand?

A clear architecture gives you structure to launch new offerings, maintain clarity for consumers, and insulate your flagship brand from risk.