EA forced to put popular FIFA 20 Ultimate Team promo on hold

EA has been forced to postpone a popular FIFA 20 Ultimate Team promo as it looks increasingly unlikely real-world football will return any time soon.

Team of the Week Moments, itself a lockdown replacement for the traditional Team of the Week promo, will be placed on hold during the ongoing Team of the Season So Far promo, EA confirmed in a blog post.

Team of the Week Moments was introduced in March as EA tweaked FUT because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Normally, EA runs Team of the Week promotions in which new cards are introduced into packs based on the outstanding performance of real players. These new cards have fancy designs, and boosted stats to reflect the real players' good form.

But with football off for the foreseeable future across the world, EA no longer has real players to base Team of the Week cards upon. So it ditched Team of the Week, replacing it with a new promotion called Team of the Week Moments, a recurring promotion based on a historical TOTW release from previous FUT titles.

Over a month later, and with the return of real-world football still looking distant, EA has canned Team of the Week Moments, too.

The current Team of the Week Moments promo goes out of packs at 6pm UK time today, 29th April. From then, Team of the Week Moments is on hold.

"Should the football calendar resume widely enough, Team of the Week would return following TOTSSF effective Wednesday, 10th June," EA said.

"Otherwise, Team of the Week Moments will continue effective Wednesday, 10th June."

All football in the UK remains suspended indefinitely, though ongoing talks are pointing to the season resuming some time in June. However, Belgian doctor Michel D'Hooghe, chair of Fifa's medical committee, recently cast doubt on the return of real-world football in the short-term, saying "there are a lot of arguments to say we should not yet play competitive football" because of the coronavirus pandemic. Other leagues across Europe though have cancelled this season entirely, with France, Holland and Belgium now finished for the 2019/20 campaign.