Football Manager 2024 is the most played title in series history, clocking 7 million players by the end of February 2024.

Football Manager 25, originally intended for a November 2024 release, was cancelled in February 2025 after multiple delays.

In April 2006, Sports Interactive was acquired completely by the publisher in a continuing trend of consolidation within the games industry.

Commonly known as FM 2005, it competed directly with Championship Manager 5 from Eidos-funded Beautiful Game Studios.

Football Manager 2005 included an updated user interface, a refined game engine, updated database and competition rules, pre and post-match information, international player news, cup summary news, a 2D match engine, coach reports on squads, jobcentre for non-playing positions, mutual contract termination, enhanced player loan options, manager mind games, and various other features.

The first comes with the game and the second is usually downloadable in February as a free data update to reflect the changes which take place during the winter opening of the FIFA transfer window.

The Xbox 360 version was released on 13 April 2006 and is the first home console game in the Football Manager series.

Due to the large save files of the game, which is region free, the Xbox 360 hard disk drive is required.

On 1 October 2006, Sports Interactive released a Gold Demo of Football Manager 2007, available in two versions: vanilla and strawberry.

A patch has been released to combat some of the main bugs in the game, such as unrealistic scout reports and high amounts of injuries sustained whilst playing on the pitch.

The release date was brought forward by a day to 18 October 2007 due to some retailers shipping the game early.

The use of online-activation DRM utilised by Sports Interactive resulted in issues for consumers activating either online, or phone.

Shortly following this announcement, Sports Interactive reinforced their pursuit of online retailers by offering Football Manager 2009 through eSellerate for the Mac OS X platform on 23 December 2008.

[7] On 23 July 2010, a number of features and the design of the box were leaked before an official announcement could be made, including:[8] Football Manager 2012 was released on 21 October 2011.

These included the addition of a director of football, being able to give certain roles to other staff that managers would have to do themselves in previous games, taxes, a new way of making loan deals and the addition of Classic Mode where players could go through one season in eight hours without having to customize training or deal with team talk.

In August 2013, the Sports Interactive official website unveiled the main tweaks and upgrades to be added in Football Manager 2014, the most noticeable being the decision to release a simultaneous version for the Linux operating system.

Among the other changes announced were extended options in transfer and contract negotiations, as well as player conversations, the ability to play with more than just three nations loaded in Classic Mode, a tactical overhaul, and improvements to the 3D match engine.

[14] The game was set to feature the series debut of women's football; however, several features were slated for removal – international football,[15] create-a-club, touchline shouts, in-game social media, versus mode, challenge mode and fantasy draft – mostly with the aim of meeting release date targets with the promise that most would return in future instalments.

These early version of the mobile game utilized the PISD Ltd technology to target the handheld markets.

On 20 April 2007, Sega Europe Ltd and Sports Interactive released details for Football Manager Live, which would be a brand new massively multiplayer online game based on PISD Ltd technology.

[18] On 14 April 2011, it was announced that Football Manager Live would be discontinued after all Gameworlds (servers) completed their next season (28 day period), which was due around the end of May 2011.

signed a deal with Sports Interactive allowing them to use the game's database to scout players and opposition.

[21] A video documentary entitled Football Manager: More Than Just A Game was produced by journalism graduate and MA student Stephen Milnes and released in October 2010.

[32] Brereton received encouragement from Chile head coach Reinaldo Rueda and began the application process for a Chilean passport.

's youth set up, before taking up assistant roles with Preston North End, Lierse, and eventually becoming manager of Beerschot, leading them to a 9th place finish in First Division A.

Nathan Owolabi was given the position of Support Tactician at Bromley and his journey was documented by broadcaster TNT Sports.

First, database players simulated potential and real life transfer market activity are mutually shaping each other.