A Sales Story |E15| EA Sports College Football 25

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On July 9th, 2013, EA Sports released its latest entry in the long running college football video game series, NCAA Football 14. The game was a fairly iterative improvement on what had come before, with the most notable thing about it being it would be the final game of the series to release for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. A new generation of console hardware was on the horizon for the coming holiday season, and with it, the promise of more impressive and realistic sports simulation games, as had been the case with each prior leap to new hardware.

But the following year, several months after the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 had arrived, no new entry into the NCAA Football series would be published. In fact, these consoles would never see a single entry of the series. Despite the continued and growing popularity of college football in the United States, the NCAA Football series appeared to be dead.
So… what happened? Why did this well-loved franchise, one that would reliably see sales in the millions, and which from 2002 through 2013 had never missed being in the top 20 best selling games in the United States per Circana, suddenly just end? And why would it take eleven more years for it to return with EA Sports College Football 25?

A Brief History of NCAA College Football

In 1988, Electronic Arts released John Madden Football for the Apple II, with ports to the Commodore and MS-DOS following in 1989. Despite development issues arising due to the complexity of translating the rules of American football to a playable experience and being turned down by other would-be sponsors such as San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, the game was well received and launched a massive new franchise for Electronic Arts.

Seeking to replicate the success of what would become the Madden NFL series, EA next turned its attention to developing a game around college football. Standford Head Coach Bill Walsh, who previously in his career had coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl Championships, was signed to be the face of the series, and in 1993 Bill Walsh’s College Football would release for the Sega Genesis and Sega CD systems, with a Super Nintendo version releasing in February the next year. The game would have only 24 teams, many of which were unlicensed stand-ins for well-known programs similar to how the John Madden Football games had functioned prior to obtaining official licensing from the NFL. Despite this, the game was well received and regarded as a step up in terms of game feel and AI from other football games.

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September 1993 Magazine ad for Bill Walsh's College Football

EA now had another hit on their hands, and the schools and conferences were on board to officially appear in the game. It wasn’t long before the series became an annual release. EA dropped Bill Walsh’s name from the game titles with College Football USA 96 and College Football USA 97, before taking on the branding of the National Collegiate Athletics Association, becoming the NCAA Football series from 1998 through 2013.

Amateurism and the End of NCAA Football

The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) is the governing body of college athletics in the United States. It is responsible for representing the rights of student athletes in membership schools and organizing competition and events between schools. The NCAA had traditionally been very insistent on its stance regarding the status of student athletes: That they were students first and foremost, and therefore amateurs. They believed it was important to keep this distinction between amateurism and professionalism to maintain the integrity of college athletics and differentiate from the professional leagues that are driven by profit. What this meant for the students is that they were forbidden from earning money off of their position as student athletes. Schools could offer them scholarships for free education, living stipends, and other means of compensation, but the students could not (officially) be paid to compete for their school.

This is of course something of an issue when making a video game in which the primary controllable characters are representing the student athletes. In order to comply with the NCAA’s stance, EA settled on a compromise. They would not directly put student athletes in the game, but they would approximate their likenesses and reported stats for the game, renaming the in-game players as simply their position and number (example QB #18). Students who graduated in the previous year and thus were no longer bound by the NCAA’s Amateurism Policy could license their appearance for the game covers, but officially no active student athletes appeared in the games.

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a screenshot of gameplay from the NCAA Football series, with the players renamed to their position numbers

This seemed to have worked for some time, as the series continued as it was until 2013. However, in the years leading up to this some former student athletes had taken a hard stance against the inclusion of their digital counterparts in the games, feeling that despite the steps taken by EA to obfuscate the player identities and only approximate their likeness, the games, both for football and basketball, were still largely exploiting the players popularity via approximate likenesses of the athletes. And the athletes weren’t going to stand for it any longer.

Several new lawsuits were brought before both the NCAA and EA, and in July of 2013, as NCAA Football 14 was being released, the NCAA announced they would not be renewing their license for future entrees in the series. EA, for their part, actually did propose direct compensation to the players for their inclusion in the game, but the NCAA was unwilling to bend on their amateurism policy. EA had intended to still go on with the series, and the Collegiate Licensing Company, which handles licensing the branding of the individual schools and conferences, extended its license with EA through 2017. However, in September of 2013, three major conferences containing the most popular teams in the sport, the SEC, the Big Ten, and the PAC-12, withdrew the support of their schools. With little else they could do, EA put the series on an indefinite hiatus.

Names, Images, and Likenesses: A Path Forward

While the NCAA College Football series was apparently over for the time being, one fact had not changed. College athletics had become big business. New broadcast and streaming deals had made college football and basketball massive money makers. In 2022-2023, the NCAA earned nearly $1.3 billion in revenue from broadcasting streaming the NCAA Basketball Tournament and other events, while in 2023, the Big Ten Network paid out around $60 million to each of its schools for the broadcasting rights to their games.

Despite all of this, as of 2019, student athletes were still unable to officially collect payment for their participation in their sports. Several former athletes had brought cases against the likes of the NCAA and EA which were settled out of court, but current athletes as well increasingly wanted their share of the growing pie. Of course, college athletics had always been lucrative, and in the past, there were no shortage of scandals involving schools skirting or flat out ignoring the amateurism policy, including giving away cars, generous stipends, or simply paying hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table.

California was the first state to officially attempt to overturn the NCAA’s Amateurism Policy in 2019, introducing the Fair Pay to Play Act, allowing student athletes to directly collect compensation in exchange for the usage of their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). In 2021, the United States Supreme Court affirmed that the NCAA has been in violation of antitrust law and with the decision on National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, NIL became the new law of the land when it came to compensation in college athletics. The age of amateurism was over.

The Return of EA Sports College Football

The exact impact and implementation of NIL policy remains a contentious topic, and a bit beyond the scope of this article. What is important is that NIL finally resolved the issue with implementing student athletes into a video game, and that EA Sports could finally resurrect their college football series.

On February 15, 2024 the first teaser for EA Sports College Football 25 was released:



While showing fairly little, the prospect of the series returning (Notably without the NCAA branding, which had been ditched in favor of direct deals with the schools and conferences) was enough to energize and excite fans, and anticipation began to build for the full reveal and the launch of a new game. The athletes were seemingly on board as well, with over 10,000 signing an NIL deal with EA Sports to appear in the game, which included $600 in compensation and a copy of the game. Some held out, which would result in them being replaced with a generic character in game. The most notable initial exclusion was Arch Manning, Texas backup quarterback and nephew of famed NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning. EA would go on to offer him a $50,000 endorsement deal to promote and be included in the game, in addition to the standard package, which he accepted.

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Promotional Image of EA Sports College Football 25 featuring several student athletes, including Texas Quarterback Quinn Ewers, Michigan Running Back Donovan Edwards, and Colorado Cornerback Travis Hunter

On May 17th, a full reveal trailer was released, putting a focus on showcasing the traditions and atmosphere unique to college football, which would both excite fans and help differentiate it further from the Madden series.



Reception and Sales

While the official release date of EA Sports College Football 25 was July 19th, 2024, the game offered a 3-day early access period and launched on July 16th for those who bought either the Deluxe Edition or the MVP Bundle which also included Madden NFL 25. On launch day, EA published a press release stating the 2.2 million unique players had participated in this early access period, in addition to 600,000 more through the EA Play trial. This would immediately make EA Sports College Football 25 one of the best selling game in its series, and one of the best selling football games of all time, with Circana’s Mat Piscatella saying it “may indeed be the mass market breakout hit this console gen really needs right now.” Critical reception was also positive, earning an 83 aggregate score on Metacritic, notably higher than the Madden series had earned since Madden NFL 2016. Later reporting would indicate the game had attained 5 million unique players within its first week and would earn both the number 1 and 2 spots for best-selling game in the US for July 2024 (with the second slot being filled by the MVP bundle). It would similarly rank both 1st and 3rd in Canada that month.

On October 24th, 2024, Mat Piscatella announced on Bluesky that the game had become the all-time best selling football game in the United States, and ranked second for sports games in general, trailing only NBA 2K21. It was only a matter of time before EA Sports College Football 25 became the all-time best selling sports title in the US, which it would finally have confirmed on December 18th:



EA Sports College Football 25 became the best-selling Sports video game in U.S. history (dollar sales) and now ranks among the top 50 best-selling tracked video games all-time in that measure.

In addition, as of reported data up to November, EA Sports College Football 25 is also the best selling game in the United States for 2024



Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 repeated as the month’s best-selling video game, ranking as the #2 best-selling game of 2024 year-to-date - trailing only EA Sports College Football 25.

The Future

It is clear that a decade of absence has done nothing to diminish the demand for a college football gaming experience. The astounding early performance of EA Sports College Football 25 even indicates it was strongly propelled by pent up demand, which future entries will not benefit from in the same way. However, College Football will be here to stay as a fixture in the video game market for a long time barring any new legal shake ups. It is likely that NIL negotiations, including courting the top athletes for endorsement and inclusion will become a key priority for EA with future releases, but with the success seen so far, it should remain a lucrative partnership for all parties involved.

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