After paying school athletes $600 to look in School Soccer 25, EA can pay gamers greater than double that for this 12 months’s CFB 26. EA Sports activities confirmed to FBS gamers in an e-mail immediately, obtained by The Athletic, stating that gamers will get $1,500 in the event that they decide in to look on this 12 months’s sport. That is no shock, as this info leaked earlier this 12 months.
Moreover, gamers will obtain a Deluxe Version copy of the game–this was additionally provided in 2025. EA can pay some athletes extra for showing as model ambassadors, identical to final 12 months.
A spokesperson for EA stated, “School sports activities are rising and altering, and our focus at EA Sports activities is on persevering with to place athletes first as we carry them within the sport in School Soccer 26 and past.”
More than 11,000 student-athletes appeared in CFB 25 by Title, Picture, and Likeness (NIL) offers, with EA spending greater than $6 million to cowl that. A spokesperson advised The Athletic that EA will double its fee to gamers to greater than $16.5 million to assist them really feel acknowledged for the success of CFB 25. Of word, the $16.5 million determine reportedly doesn’t embrace any additional funds to sure gamers who’ve ambassador offers or for additional funds to cowl athletes.
That sport was the No. 2 best-selling sport of 2024 general within the US, solely surpassed by Black Ops 6. CFB 25 was the best-selling sports video game in US history based on dollar sales.
According to Front Office Sports, EA can be doubtlessly going to barter royalty-based funds for sure gamers on high of the $1,500 look payment.
CFB 26 is within the works now and is predicted to launch in July. EA Sports activities government Daryl Holt advised The Athletic that the staff knew it was by no means going to have the ability to get the whole lot it wished to in 2024’s sport. “So there’s a number of meat left on the bone,” he stated.
Holt declined to get into specifics concerning new options for CFB 26, however teased, “We have a number of issues nonetheless to return.”
He added: “We launch a sport, we perceive what’s essential to gamers and what they play and what they want modified, improved or added. It is a sport for followers constructed by school followers ourselves, and we wish it to be that sort of relationship to grasp what’s essential to them.”