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 get paid more than double for doing so. Now, the company will pay the universities for using their names, images and likeness in the video game—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 circles back to the athletes being paid with NIL funds to remain at the universities they play at. If a player is popular in the game and provides the school more money through that, then the school would have added incentive to retain the player through more NIL funds, for example.
Each school will earn a different amount of royalties since it's all based on popularity and usage in the game. Previously, schools were compensated by tier levels from the AP's Top 25 poll. Now, their ranking doesn't 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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This article was originally published on www.si.com as EA Sports to Pay Schools Based on Game Usage in 'College Football 26'.