Electronic Arts Inc. revealed Finally on how much college athletes will be paid to appear in the highly anticipated upcoming video game “EA Sports College Football 25”.
A total of 11,390 college football players from 134 FBS schools will be eligible to receive $600 each to have their name, image and likeness (NIL) appear in the game, regardless of whether they are the star quarterback or backup defensive lineman on their team. a team. Players will also receive a free copy of the game from EA Sports and Electronics Arts's
Sports division, the company told ESPN on Thursday.
“It's low,” Tim Dierdinger, assistant professor of marketing and strategy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, told MarketWatch about EA's payments to players for their no-loss rights. “They need to be careful about this ‘one size fits all, take it or reject it’ offer, otherwise the game might fail.”
“Why, let us say, [star quarterbacks] Caleb Williams or Arch Manning signing for $600? “All it will do is get NIL for low-quality players that no one cares about,” Dierdinger added.
All college football players will need to sign up to be able to play in the game and receive $600. The company said that athletes will receive a subscription notification from EA Sports via their university email address.
On Thursday, EA Sports' vice president of global marketing, John Resibog, said more than 5,000 athletes have already chosen to be part of the game in the first 12 hours. EA also announced that the in-game announcers will be ESPN's Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstedt.
See also: Why might a new Apple Sports app be bad news for Google?
EA Sports' college football video game franchise, titled “NCAA Football,” was last released in 2014. The game, despite its relative popularity, died at least in part due to a series of legal disputes involving the NCAA, EA, and college athletes . Who did not receive any form of compensation for not being used in the games.
The NCAA began allowing college athletes to earn name, image and likeness money in 2021 — when student-athletes finally won a decades-old argument about the fairness of receiving no reward for using their NIL, even when the games they played generated millions of dollars for the institutions they attended, as Football and basketball were the biggest sources of income. Some top athletes have been able to earn millions from their risk-free rights, and some professionals even out-earn their income in the same sport.
Quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Arch Manning are among the highest NIL earners in the NCAA and have NIL values in the millions, according to On3's NIL algorithm.
“The game benefits from these star athletes at this price,” Dierdinger said. “That's the whole reason we went to NIL.”
Darren Hytner, an attorney who mediates NIL deals for student-athletes, agreed that the $600 isn't much of an incentive for top college football players, but it still makes sense for most players to agree to it.
EA did not respond to MarketWatch's request for comment on this story.
Assuming each player opts for $600, EA would pay at least $7 million to college athletes. The company also indicated that it could implement separate NIL deals with college athletes as well as $600 compensation for future game promotion, advertising or as the game's cover athlete.
The sports cover, a highly sought-after spot at the forefront of the game's physical and digital copies, has not been announced yet. The last athlete to appear on the cover of an EA college football game was University of Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson. That game sold 1.5 million copies.
“We feel very proud that we're going to be the biggest program, and potentially the highest spending program,” Sean O'Brien, vice president of business development at EA Sports, told ESPN. “This is truly a comprehensive opportunity with equitable distribution of funds across the board.”
The news comes as EA reported an uptick in demand for games during its earrings last month, partly due to gains in its popular soccer game franchise EA Sports FC. EA also produces games including the NFL's “Madden” franchise, “Star Wars Jedi: Survivor” and “Apex Legends.”
Continue reading: “Did the NIL play a role in Alabama coach Nick Saban's sudden retirement?
