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ATLANTA, GEORGIA - JANUARY 1: EA Sports College Football 25 activation at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl between the Texas Longhorns and Arizona State Sun Devils at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on January 1, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia
In 2024, the beloved EA Sports College Football video game returned after more than a decade-long hiatus. The new game went flying off shelves, with fans showing so much interest that sales of both PlayStation and Xbox consoles also soared.
The 2024 release was the second-best-selling video game of the year in the United States, behind only Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
However, just a few years later, the hype has begun to die down, and according to a new report, the future of the game is already in serious doubt.
Mike Straw of Insider Gaming reports that rising costs surrounding NIL and development could threaten the game’s existence moving forward.
EA Sports College Football Is Becoming More Expensive To Produce
So, why exactly would a game that has sold so well in its three years back be at risk of extinction? Sure, College Football 26 didn’t sell as well as College Football 25, and College Football 27 did worse than both.
But all three performed relatively well.
The question, however, is what the future looks like for EA Sports.
“While there will be a game for the next few years, many who spoke, including a couple I would consider to be senior-level around the game, have expressed worry that the franchise could go away in the next five years,” Straw writes.
The crux of the issue surrounds NIL payments to players and rising development costs.
Initial NIL payments to players were $600. That number has since risen to $1,500 per player. In total, EA Sports is dishing out just under $20 million in NIL payments for the game, with the number likely to continue to grow.
Straw’s quick math shows that EA must sell around 275,000 copies at $69.99 just to cover that number, and there are other costs involved.
On top of NIL, EA Sports spends tens of millions to license universities, bowl games, and other properties. There are also development and marketing costs that exceed eight figures. It nears a point where making the game just doesn’t make financial sense for EA.
“We’re not FC. We’re not Madden. We don’t make the money they do, and everyone knows it.. But it’s at the point where if we don’t find a way to keep players around and, in turn, make more, we won’t have anything.
Forget in 10 years, I’m scared about if we have a game by the end of the decade. Games aren’t getting cheaper to make, and there’s the real concern with all of us that EA’s going to streamline and just have a few key franchises and dump everything else.” – Anonymous source on EA Sports College Football.
The company is now searching for additional ways to monetize the game. However, those also come with pushback from players. In the end, something has to give, and that give could well be the game ceasing to exist in the future.