Football Manager 2024 is the best-selling entry in series history with 7 million gum-chewing devotees, studio pays tribute to 'incredible community of players'

Football Manager is one of those games that now feels like an institution. I play the newest entry and, even though it's a much-improved and more sophisticated experience, I am still in some sense a teenage boy at a beige PC with my treasured copy of Championship Manager 97/98. I've been playing some version of this game on-and-off for a quarter of a century. 

Sports Interactive was founded in 1994 and has specialised in this one game ever since (with a few short-lived forays into hockey and baseball management). It has built a huge and loyal fanbase devoted to the Football Manager series, and has established the game as such an accurate simulation of the real world that it is now used in aspects of the sport (hell, there are even pro managers who credit the game with their careers).

So the news that Football Manager 2024 has become the best-selling entry in series history feels both unsurprising and richly deserved. Sports Interactive has announced that last week saw the game record «its seven millionth player» which beats the previous record of 6.88 million players set by Football Manager 2023. SI notes that the latter figure was achieved over that game's lifespan, but «FM24 broke that record in less than 100 days.»

The studio's statement cites various factors that helped in reaching this figure, including its first official release in Japan alongside console, mobile and Netflix releases. SI's studio director Miles Jacobson says hitting seven million players «in barely three months gives me and everyone at the studio enormous pride.»

It's put Jacobson in something of a philosophical mood about SI's journey. «From a game originally made for fun by [SI co-founders] Paul and Ov Collyer in their Shropshire bedroom,» says Jacobson, «to a studio pursued and purchased by SEGA, and now being embedded in the world of football and being partnered with some of the globe’s biggest clubs, competitions and brands—riding out all the ups and downs in the industry along the way—is