EA Sports Royalty Payments To NCAA Member Schools Were Performance-Based

EA Sports had quite the hustle on the royalties from NCAA video games. According to multiple reports, the gaming company determined payments based on top 25 Associated Press polls over a 10-year period. 

There's heavy information to consider in all of this, so check the Kotaku report that breaks everything down. But here's a clip that sums up the situation. 

"As you will recall, the current royalty tiering structure is based on each institution's team performance over a rolling ten-year period," says the current proposal, circulated on CLC letterhead. "The greater the success, the higher the tier for the participating university. The football tiering variable is year-end ranking in the AP top 25."

Basically, if a team has been ranked consistently in the AP top 25 poll over the past 10 years, it gets the top payout level—which EA Sports says is a minimum of $78,000 each year through 2017. The second-tier teams get $47,000 a year; third tier get $31,000; last tier gets $7,500. 

This is interesting because it hadn't been widely discussed on whether these payments were performance-based. Since they clearly are, that would suggest the players on teams that get more money definitely deserve a cut, especially with their images and likenesses being used. Notice that EA Sports has recently tried to abandon its relationship with college football, just to sort of clear the air. 

Back to top