Snoop Lion Helps Electronic Arts Score Record FIFA Soccer 13 Launch

Rapper Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dogg) loves soccer as much as he loves weed. Electronic Arts hired Snoop to promote its new EA Sports FIFA 13 Soccer game. He’s in the TV commercials. He attended the New York City launch party. And he did the rounds with all the major media outlets like ESPN. All that hype helped break a lot of records.
After just five days, EA ended up selling 4.5 million copies of the game worldwide. That’s the biggest game launch of 2012 (at least until Activision releases Call of Duty: Black Ops II) and the biggest sports game launch ever. FIFA 13 is currently the No. 1 selling game in 40 countries, thanks to the global popularity of soccer and the increased awareness of the sport in the U.S. EA sold over 1 million copies of the game in the United Kingdom in the first day alone.
Just how much of this success can be credited back to Snoop remains to be seen, but there’s a reason big companies are using the rapper to help launch big games. Namco Bandai enlisted Snoop at E3 to promote its hit game Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Snoop is even in that fighting game.
Snoop is a big gamer. At one point, he even ran his own video game league – the Hip Hop Gaming League. He attends E3 in Los Angeles every year, usually to help promote games like Yoostar on MTV, which put players inside interactive music videos back in 2011.