EA Sports to Pay Schools Based on Game Usage in 'College Football 26'

The College Football 26 video game will be released on July 10 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and creator EA Sports already announced that college stars who opted in to use their names in the game would be paid more than double for doing so. Now, the company will pay the universities for using the schools' names, images and likeness in the video game, too—but it's all dependent on how much their teams are used in the game.

Matt Liberman of cllctmedia obtained documents through a FOIA request to reveal EA Sports's new payment plan for universities. All 136 FBS schools featured in this year's edition of the game will be compensated based on their popularity and usage in the game.

“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 obtained by Liberman stated. "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.”

The premise should help athletes who are paid with NIL funds remain at the universities they play for. If a player is popular in the game and provides the school more money that way, then the school would have added incentive to retain the player through added NIL funds, for example.

Each school will earn a different amount of royalties since it's all based on popularity and game usage. Previously, schools were compensated by tier levels from the AP's Top 25 poll. Now, ranking will not matter for compensation.

So, if you want your team and its players to be paid more, make sure to select them when playing the new College Football 26 game.

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