Sports Interactive and Sega have announced that there won’t be a Football Manager 24 data update for the 2024/25 season ahead of the release of Football Manager 25.
In a message on X (formerly Twitter), the two studios say that although they’ve been “exploring” the possibility of an update for the existing game, implementing such a thing would be a “substantial undertaking” which would divert “critical resources” from Football Manager 25.
Essentially, the studios say it would be impossible to “lift assets” being used in Football Manager 25 and drop them into FM24 “without recreating them in full”. Since FM25 will contain data from the 2024/25 season, the studios would have to recreate that data within FM24‘s engine.
The same logic applies to “the many competition rules, translations and database changes that cannot be back ported”, owing to the fact that Football Manager 25 will sport (no pun intended) an entirely new engine.
Updated assets and data would “both be required to obtain licensor approval”, Sports Interactive and Sega say, and despite “a good initial response” from many licensors, the work involved seems like it would simply be too much.
In case you’re wondering, Football Manager 25 was originally intended for launch next month, but was delayed to 2025 after what Sports Interactive called a “difficult development cycle”.
The game will boast a Premier League license for the first time in the series’ history, but it will compromise on various Football Manager mainstay features, including Create-a-Club and other core series mechanics.
Football Manager 25 is now scheduled to launch in March, but since that date is fairly close to the end of the 2024/25 football (sorry, Americans) season, some fans have been asking after a season update for the existing game to tide them over.
Sadly, it looks like that won’t be happening. If you want to see current data, you’ll have to wait for Football Manager 25, which is set to launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox in March 2025, with versions for the Switch and mobile devices to follow after.
