Draft:2024 EA Sports FC Pro World Championship

The 2024 EA Sports FC Pro  World Championship is an upcoming esports tournament for the association football video game EA Sports FC 24. It is the first iteration of the EA Sports FC Pro World Championship, the successor to the annual FIFAe World Cup (Formerly known as the FIFA Interactive World Cup and FIFA eWorld Cup) tournament that was run by FIFA. Forty-four players from thirty-two partnered leagues, as well as the FC Pro Open tournament, will qualify based on their placement in regional tournaments; Manuel Bachoore from Team Gullit, the defending champion from the 2023 FIFAe World Cup, failed to get out of his FC Pro Open group and lost the eDivisie final as part of PSV Esports to AFC Ajax eSports, but still qualified due to Ajax eSports only sending one player to the tournament via the eDivisie.

Background
From 2004 to 2023, FIFA, the global governing body for association football, held an annual world championship tournament for their FIFA video game franchise, which was developed by EA Sports. The tournament, known originally as the FIFA Interactive World Cup, would be known for its open qualifying format, allowing players from around the world to qualify; as such Guinness World Records would recognize the FIWC in 2014 as the largest online esports game. The tournament would be renamed to the FIFA eWorld Cup and later the FIFAe World Cup in 2018 and 2020 respectively. Qualification to the tournament would change from strictly open qualifying to allowing partnered leagues to send players, which began in 2018. One such example of a partnered league is eMLS, a partnership between EA Sports and Major League Soccer which features players representing MLS clubs. These partnered leagues would feed into the FIFA Global Series, which would qualify players for the FIFAe World Cup.

In 2022, FIFA and EA Sports would part ways, leaving FIFA 23, which came out in September of that year, as the final EA Sports football video game to bear the FIFA name and the 2023 FIFAe World Cup as the last FIFAe World Cup to use EA's video game. In 2023, EA Sports would announce their own esports circuit for what is now known as the EA Sports FC series, known as EA Sports FC Pro, which featured the top players from both EA's partnered leagues and a new open qualifying format known as FC Pro Open qualifying for the EA Sports FC Pro World Championship, which would essentially replace the FIFAe World Cup. The official list of partnered leagues that would qualify players for the 2024 FC Pro World Championship was revealed on 12 February 2024, with allocations confirmed on 16 February.

On 20 March 2024, EA Sports announced that the FC Pro World Championship would be held within Europe, although an exact location wasn't revealed.

Qualified players
The following players have qualified for the event:

Play-in stage

 * Date and time: TBA June 2024
 * Format TBA
 * 8 players qualify for the group stage.

Group stage

 * Date and time: TBA June 2024
 * 32 players are divided into 8 groups of four, each playing in a GSL-style double-elimination format.
 * Group winners and runners-up advance to the knockout stage.


 * Group A


 * Group B


 * Group C


 * Group D


 * Group E


 * Group F


 * Group G


 * Group H

Knockout stage

 * Date and time: TBA June 2024
 * 16 players are put into a single elimination knockout bracket and are seeded based on their group placements.
 * The winner will be crowned the EA Sports FC Pro World Champion.