Is EA College Football in trouble? Here’s what I’m hearing.

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Quick note: I am in Utah today, doing reporting in Provo and Ogden, ahead of tomorrow’s Notre Dame/BYU game. If you’re around tomorrow, come say hello!

The big story in college football right now is the potential that the sport will move to a 24-team playoff system in the very near future, but since the rest of the internet is writing about that, I’ll quickly touch on something that’s more in my wheelhouse.

Earlier in this week, Mike Straw of Insider Gamingdropped a bomb on fans of EA Sports College Football. According to his reporting, multiple folks at EA Sports are worried about the long-term commercial

Speaking to multipleure of the College Football franchise. 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

Sales of the game, while still strong, have gradually declined since the peak of excitement in 2024. The game was the second-best-selling game in July 2026 but fell out of the top 10 the following month. For the prior releases, College Football 25 didn’t fall out of the top 10 until February 2025, while College Football 26 dropped out in December 2025.

Games fluctuate in popularity, and not every game will sell as well as others. But why is there a worry for College Football’s future?

A big reason comes down to finances. College Football 25 paid out $600 to each player who signed on to be a part of the game’s roster. With more than 11,000 players in the game, that was roughly 7–7.5 million going to players. 

Fast forward to College Football 27, and that cost has jumped to $1,500 per player. That means the studio is spending just under $20 million in NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) payments alone. 

Straw also quoted ae that serves as a major, had “flopped.”

Because we’ve done a ton of reporting on the development of EA Sports College Football and other college sports video games, many readers reached out for my reaction. I also found time to make a few phone calls to folks I know at EA, in the licensing industry and at the campus level. Here are my main takeaways after the jump.

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We dug into the financial data from across the countryand created detailed reports on both D-1 softball and baseball programs. Which programs spentthe most? Where are budgets growing? What spending actually correlates with winning?What programs are generating the most revenue? Where that revenue comes from?

Dive in and see how your program stacks up. And look for women’s and men’s basketball reports coming in the weeks ahead.

Read the softball report|Read the baseball report

The college football video game franchise is not at risk for going away in the near future

According to EA’s licensing agreement with CLC and various schools, the company hascommittedto producing one more game, due to come out next year. The original agreement was for four titles, produced annually. However, multipleonly interested in renewing that agreement,but is also in active negotiations to do so

Given that EA also made a huge effort to secure licensing rights for a collegebasketballgame (an effort that was ultimately scuttled), and given how the company has hired to support the college football series, I don’t think its outward actions indicate any wavering of its commitment to supporting college sports video games.

These licensing agreements aretypicallyabout four years in length. Barring something dramatically unforeseen happening, I believe it is reasonable to assume the game will continue until at least 2032. Beyond that, I don’t know if anybody can be certain what generation of consoles consumers will be using or what the main delivery service for video games will even be.

I’m confident that if the game does go away or fails to perform financially, athlete and university licensing costswon’tbe the reason

Yes, EA Sports has to pay to license the NIL rights of alotof college football players — more than 10,000 in any given year. Given the number of teams in these video games and their roster sizes, EA has claimed the college football video games are the largest licensing effortin all of video game history, in terms of the raw number of individuals depicted.

But the financial terms of that agreement are arguably the most publisher-friendly in the industry. The individual athlete licensing payments did not increaseat allfrom 26 to 27, and unlike most games involving professional athletes, there are no royality bonuses. The athletes get a flat $1,500 fee, unless they make the cover of the game or are paid for marketing efforts independent of their participation. EA also pays a 10 percent of sales royalty rate toschools.

That’s a lot of money — an annual licensing commitment north of $10 million, to say nothing of what EA pays to license music from popular recording artists or for any other intellectual property.

So I understand why some at EA would be nervous, especially since sales of the game have declined over the last three years and individual athlete payments jumped from $600 to $1,500 from Year 1 to Year 2.

But this is stillthe most publisher-friendly licensing deal. EA has to paymoremoney to players and teams for every other game it produces! The lack of a union or players association to formally bargain on behalf of the athletes drives those total costsdown, compared to what the MLBPA, NFLPA and others would demand.

I believe folks at EA told Insider Gaming they were worried about those costs. But I cannot believe they would be the actual reason a game would go away, especially one thatis still selling very well, compared to video games in general.

A bi-weekly look at the rapidly changing licensing landscape in college sports, as part of a paid sponsorship withDesert Cactus.

In May, the U.S. Forest Service co-branded Smokey Bear with several schools, including the University of Montana, in a nod to its fire science program. Streaker Sports produced a one-time Smokey apparel line for the Griz, sold on campus and online. A portion of the proceeds go to the Smokey Bear wildfire-prevention campaign — and that’s not the only thing that’s unique about the partnership. Because Smokey’s image is a congressional trademark, it would be difficult for other schools to copy the partnership.

The Montana partnership is an example of a cross-brand licensing collaboration at its best; the partner IP fits the school’s story, and the product is limited, turning one-time hype into licensing revenue and perhaps even a reason to attend a game. And the idea isn’t new; fans may remember all the way back in 2018, when Marvel and USC co-branded on an apparel line featuring Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Wolverine in cardinal and gold.

Such partnerships unfold across pro sports, too. In September, the Disney x NFL x Champion line launched, pairing characters from Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars with all 32 NFL teams. Earlier this year, Hello Kitty and MLB partnered on a 30-style capsule with Homage, launching with Dodgers, Yankees and Cubs gear in limited drops throughout the season. And it wasn’t Hello Kitty’s first venture into pro sports; the Rams collaborated with Sanrio on a Hello Kitty line last season, making a clear bag and coin purse available only to fans who bought tickets to a specific game through a dedicated link. 

The Lakers took a similar approach in their collab with One Piece, holding an anime crossover night at Crypto.com Arena last year. The only way to get a limited edition tee and poster was to attend the game. It’s the classic example of a licensing collaboration bringing fans into the building.

Get the guide on five licensing considerations in the NIL world here.

It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though

As a result of the leveraged buyout that recently took Electronic Arts private, the company will now be saddled with an awful lot of debt.That’s already setting off a bondholder battle, and the company will probably look to cut costs, support fewer titles or streamline in other ways to produce the cash flow needed to pay down those debts.

So I absolutely believe profitability and costs are a meaningful companywide concern. And it’s true, while Ultimate Team modes in EA FC and Madden have been quite lucrative, that hasn’t carried over at all to College Ultimate Team. I have a lot of thoughts about why this might be — I’m one of the few reporters who plays that mode more than Dynasty or single player — but that’s a different newsletter.

This is also a terrible time for the video game industry, in general. Tariffs and widespread chip shortages have shot hardware costs skyward, making gaming even more expensive. And studios, large and small, have been obliterated by layoffs. Even very good games that aren’t GTA6 may sell less than projected, simply because consumers aren’t buying and playing new games quite as often.

So I don’t think concerns from EA employees are entirely without merit. Under new ownership and control, there are plenty of unknowns about how EA will want to develop future games.

But will those problems force college football to unplug? Not in the next few years.

One last quick video game note

I reached out to a few major basketball schools about their potential participation in the next version of NBA2K’s college basketball “experience” and was surprised to hear schools in the Big East, American, Pac-12 and other leagues tell me they haven’t heard anything about participating. I do know that 2K has visited some new Power 4 schools to do face scanning and IP collection, but based on what I’ve been told, I would not expect a game with more than 60 schools.

Think something closer to last year, rather than a full-on simulation product. That doesn’t mean an out-and-out college basketball game won’t come in the future, just that it won’t be in March.

What else we’ve worked on recently

• THE EXTRA POINTS BOWL IS BACK for a third go-around. We’ll be celebrating Division III football excellence in Canton, Ohio, in late November. We’re also hosting college professorsfor free, so if you’re in Ohio or Pennsylvania and want something to do next month, give us a call.

• We filed more than 100 FOIAs to get basic spending figures for Division II athletic departments. The largest spend more than dozens of Division I programs do. The smallest? Well, they’re spending less than what a good P4 quarterback makes.

• If the weather is getting warmer and less predictable,how will college football respond?

• I still think the Protect College Sports Act is a bad bill and I hope it doesn’t become law.Find out why.

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Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I have a 3,000-calorie soda pop to drink. When in Utah, after all.