Report: EA Sports College Football 26 to pay schools based on game usage

When EA Sports College Football 26 comes out in July, schools will be compensated in a new way. Payouts will be determined by the amount of time users play as teams in the video game, cllct’s Matt Liberman reported.

Documents obtained by cllct show a new structure for royalties from the video game, which made its return last year. CLC Learfield will play a central role in the process, according to the documents, and it’s a shift from last year when the company said it couldn’t historically tie sales of the game to specific schools.

The royalty process is also a change from last year’s tier system. Schools were placed into one of four tiers based on the previous 10 years of final AP poll results, and that determined the revenue distribution. Now, it appears to be based on the time users spend playing as a school.

In a sample scenario from cllct, the total royalties in a university pool would be $5 million with 700 million games played. If users play 7 million games as School A, the school’s allocation would be 1%. Therefore, School A would receive $50,000.

“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,” a document says. “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.”

EA Sports College Football 26 will look to build on the success of College Football 25, which became the largest new console game launch in North America in 2024. EA also announced the video game had seen 6.5 million unique players to date. Quick math shows EA brought in more than $400 million in sales from the game.

This year’s standard edition cover will also feature two sophomore wide receivers – Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith and Alabama’s Ryan Williams. Additionally, the deluxe addition features a mix of current college football stars, head coaches and legends, as well as fans in the background.

EA Sports also released a trailer May 29, providing an inside look at gameplay. It also showed new features such as “Enter Sandman” by Metallica before a Virginia Tech game, as well as some of the coaches in the game, such as Ohio State’s Ryan Day and Texas’ Steve Sarkisian.