EA has signed a four-year deal to revive the EA Sports College Football franchise (also known as NCAA Football), and the terms of that deal have been revealed. It seems EA will be making four games in the new franchise between 2023 and 2027, with guaranteed royalties across four tiers for participating college institutions.
What are the terms of the EA Sports College Football deal?
This news comes via Matt Brown, publisher of the college sports newsletter Extra Points. Brown obtained the terms of the deal via a freedom of information request put in to one of the participating schools. The deal confirms that the franchise will now be called EA Sports College Football rather than NCAA Football, and that EA will make four games across four years. In addition, the deal reveals a little about how EA will handle royalty payments to schools, although some of the information is redacted.
Royalties are split into a tier system, and although the amounts and percentages have been redacted, we can see that Tier IV institutions (featuring less well-performing teams) will receive a significantly lower percentage of the royalty payments than the other three tiers. EA says tiering could “vary from year to year” if an institution begins to perform significantly above or below their current position, which would entitle that team to greater royalty payments. The royalty rate from NCAA Football has been increased from 8.5%, although we don’t know what the new amount is.
When will the first new EA Sports College Football game launch?
The return of EA Sports College Football was first announced earlier this year. In that announcement, EA said the launch timing for the first game was “still to come”. Subsequent to the announcement, Extra Points publisher Matt Brown made an Open Records request to the CLC (Collegiate Licensing Company) for information about when the game would launch. The CLC confirmed that EA intends to launch the first EA Sports College Football reboot game in “July of 2023”, making it the first game in the series in 10 years. This latest information on the deal would seem to confirm that; it starts on July 1st of that year and ends on June 30th, 2027.
It’s worth noting a couple of things here. First, EA always numbers its games a year ahead of their release, so a prospective EA Sports College Football 24 (as named in the deal above) would launch in 2023. Second, that July 1st date isn’t likely the actual release date; it is simply be in place so that the whole month of July is covered, avoiding any potential licensing issues, and easing logistics. We’ll have to wait and see if and when an official EA Sports College Football announcement arrives. Stay tuned for more info on this.
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