Championship Manager

Championship Manager was the football management series Paul and Oliver Collyer made from 1992 to 2004, ending with Championship Manager 03/04, before their studio Sports Interactive lost the name to Eidos and started Football Manager. Championship Manager 01/02 is its best remembered game; FM27 is the series' latest descendant.

Championship Manager is the series that became Football Manager: Paul and Oliver Collyer released the first game in 1992 on the Amiga and Atari ST, and their studio, Sports Interactive, made every Championship Manager up to Championship Manager 03/04. When SI and the publisher Eidos parted in 2003, Eidos kept the Championship Manager name while SI kept the code and the data, so SI's next game, Football Manager 2005, was Championship Manager in all but name. Football Manager 27, out Nov 10, 2026, descends from it.

Quick facts

First game	Championship Manager, 1992 (Amiga, Atari ST, then PC)
Creators	Paul and Oliver Collyer
Publisher	Domark, later Eidos
SI's last	Championship Manager 03/04
Best remembered	Championship Manager 01/02
The split	2003; SI signed with SEGA in Feb 2004
Successor	Football Manager 2005, Nov 5, 2004

Sources: PC Gamer, May 26, 2018; PCGamesN, Feb 12, 2017; Game Developer, Apr 4, 2006.

The Championship Manager games SI made

Game	Year or season	What stood out
Championship Manager	1992	Six years in the making; data from the Rothmans Yearbook
Championship Manager '93	1993 season	Real player names
Championship Manager Italia	Not stated	Half-published by the brothers when Domark declined
Championship Manager 2	Late 1995	Player abilities scouted by the studio; the Bosman ruling; no Amiga or Atari ST version
Championship Manager 3	Not stated	The first made wholly in SI's own studio, under Eidos
Championship Manager 01/02	2001/02 season	The series' best remembered game
Championship Manager 4	2003	The first 2D match engine; buggy at launch
Championship Manager 03/04	2003/04 season	SI's last with Eidos

Source: The history of Championship Manager and Football Manager, PC Gamer (from Retro Gamer), May 26, 2018.

How it began

The Collyers began in 1985 at home in Shropshire. Electronic Arts turned the first game down for lacking "live action", and another publisher told them to "bolt some graphics on there". Domark published it in 1992. The first two games took their numbers from the Rothmans Yearbook; around Championship Manager 2 the team began asking club fanzine writers for information, the start of the researcher network that still rates players for FM27 (Football Manager in Real Football).

Championship Manager 01/02

Retro Gamer wrote that Championship Manager 01/02 "has gone down in legend". Miles Jacobson, who took over SI's business side around that game and added an in-house testing team for it, called it "probably what CM3 should have been in the first place". Its reputation is why "CM 01/02" is still the shorthand for the series at its peak.

Championship Manager 4 and 03/04

Championship Manager 4 (2003) introduced a 2D match engine for the first time and launched with many bugs; Paul Collyer: "We totally overreached ourselves." Championship Manager 03/04 fixed it, in Jacobson's words "the game CM4 should have been", and was SI's last game with Eidos.

The Eidos split

Eidos's Ian Livingstone said in 2012 that he feared SI would leave and signed Beautiful Game Studios as insurance; that move, Jacobson said, made SI leave. SI also felt it lacked respect and had asked for higher royalties. In the split Eidos kept the name and SI kept the engine, the data "and everything else needed to make the games". Ov Collyer recalled the fear that a game called Championship Manager would outsell a better one under a new name. SI signed a five-year publishing deal with SEGA in Feb 2004, and Football Manager 2005 came out across Europe on Nov 5, 2004, the start of the series covered on Football Manager Games in Order.

What happened to the Championship Manager name

Beautiful Game Studios rebuilt Championship Manager from scratch for Eidos. Jacobson judged the first result bluntly, while praising its staff, some of whom SI later hired. The series kept going but struggled to compete with Football Manager, VideoGamer's Championship Manager 2010 review said, scoring it 7. On Nov 26, 2009 Beautiful Game Studios' parent company, Square Enix Europe, announced a restructuring of Beautiful Game Studios to redefine the franchise's business model, with around 80% of posts cut or moved to China. The name lived on in mobile games such as Championship Manager 2015, a free-to-play iOS game from Square Enix previewed in Aug 2014. No new Championship Manager has been announced as of Nov 1, 2026, as far as our sources show.

Frequently asked questions

Is Championship Manager the same as Football Manager? Football Manager is Championship Manager's continuation by the same studio, Sports Interactive, which kept the code and data when Eidos kept the name in 2003. FM27 is the latest game in that line.

Who made Championship Manager? Paul and Oliver Collyer, who founded Sports Interactive in 1994, made every Championship Manager from 1992 to Championship Manager 03/04. Later games under the name came from Eidos's Beautiful Game Studios.

Why is Championship Manager 01/02 so famous? Retro Gamer wrote that it "has gone down in legend", and Miles Jacobson called it what CM3 should have been. It is the best remembered game of the series before Football Manager and FM27.

When did Championship Manager become Football Manager? After the 2003 split with Eidos. Sports Interactive's first Football Manager, Football Manager 2005, came out on Nov 5, 2004.