It didn't take much for this to have been a success.
FIFA wanted $150 million per year. That's on top of all the money EA has to spend licensing with all the various clubs which gives them access to their brands, players, etc.
It was money exclusively going to FIFA for the name FIFA, and with it a whole host of restrictions as the article mentions, but also some suspect some that the article doesn't mention.
The only anxiety here is that this is EA's biggest cash cow. It brings in literal billions in revenue. It's their consistent money maker that gets them through dry economic seasons and lets them front cash on more experimental titles.
Ultimately all they had to do to succeed was bring in the same revenue as last year - $150 million and it's a success financial, but instead they threw the money they would have thrown at FIFA towards marketing and got a bigger bang for their buck.
The article mentions single digit revenue increases; that may seem small, until we remember that 5% of 2 billion USD is $100m.
