The international football governing body FIFA and blockchain game studio Mythical Games have teamed up to launch FIFA Rivals — a free-to-play soccer game on Apple’s iOS and Android.

Scheduled for release in the summer of 2025, FIFA Rivals will allow players to manage their own soccer clubs and compete against other players in real-time arcade matches.

The company’s CEO, John Linden, said FIFA Rivals could attract more than 100 million players, as its NFL Rivals game already has more than 6 million registered players from a much smaller market.

By comparison, about 5 billion people tuned in to watch the 2022 FIFA World Cup, while about 500 million tuned in to watch the NFL playoffs last year.

FIFA Rivals will be powered by the Mythos blockchain powered by Mythical and secured by the Polkadot network.

This partnership adds to the trend of sports associations teaming up with blockchain game studios to deliver fun and interactive fan experiences.

The desired appeal of blockchain games is that they allow players to own in-game assets and monetize them in a play-to-earn economy.

One of Mythical’s early successes was Blankos Block Party, a non-fungible token game with social building and creation features that migrated to Polkadot and is seeing around 3 million monthly transactions.

FIFA Rivals is made possible through the Mythos Foundation, which Mythical launched in October 2022 to welcome and support new players and developers in its ecosystem.

The Mythos Foundation is tasked with building cross-chain infrastructure, an in-game NFT economy, providing support for gaming guilds, growing traditional esports participation in Web3, and partnering with traditional gaming platforms to establish new policies for gamers.

Mythical raised $37 million in a Series C1 round in June 2023 to expand its market and pursue other revenue-generating initiatives.