EA Sports
Audio By Carbonatix
Most people who end up playing College Football 26 don’t need any extra incentive to play as their favorite team. However, they’ve been provided with some thanks to the new approach EA Sports is taking when it comes to compensating the programs in the game.
There have been plenty of negative developments to take issue with since the dawn of the NIL Era, but last year, we were treated to a very positive one after EA Sports brought its college football franchise back from the dead by resurrecting a series that had been shelved for over a decade.
College Football 25 ended up being the best-selling video game in 2024, and while there’s certainly plenty of room for improvement, it checked most of the boxes for fans who’d previously been forced to rely on old consoles capable of running NCAA Football 14 if they wanted to get their fix.
We’re around a month away from the release of College Football 26, which will feature the likenesses of the real-life coaches who were absent from last year’s title, an expanded “Road to Glory” mode that starts in high school, and the latest batch of the requisite gameplay improvements that EA Sports trumpets whenever it drops a new game.
Last year, the schools that appeared in the game were paid royalties that revolved around a tier-based system based on how their teams fared on the football field in real life. However, according to Cllct, that compensation will now hinge on how frequently fans play with them in the game.
The outlet came across that development by obtaining the contract that participating schools signed with the publisher via a Freedom of Information Act request, as the document includes a stipulation that reads:
“For each CFB product released by EA SPORTS, we (CLC Learfield) will provide a percentage for each institution based on the games played for that institution as a percentage of the total games played across all institutions.
This percentage of games played will become the final allocation percentage for each school that will be applied to the total gross royalties for all institutions received.”
There is reportedly a total of $5 million up for grabs, so if, say, Ohio State is picked by users in 2% of every game that gets played, it will end up getting a $100,000 check (the Buckeyes received exactly $99,875.16 for being in the game last year).
It does seem like this would also benefit some of the smaller programs that many players attempt to turn into a juggernaut in Dynasty Mode (most people aren’t going out of their way to play as UMass or Kent State in a standalone game), although it will probably take some more FOIA requests to see if that ends up being the case.