Getty Image / Mitchell Layton
After years of waiting, college football fans are getting closer to actually being able to play a new NCAA Football video game.
For the first time since NCAA Football 14 was released, EA Sports is slated to release a new entry in the series next year.
Not only are fans finally getting a new game, but they are also expected to get something they couldn’t get in previous games without downloading rosters from the internet or customizing rosters themselves.
For the first time, the next game is expected to have the names and likenesses of players currently on college football rosters.
Unfortunately, it looks like there could just be one issue getting in the way of the new feature.
The College Football Players’ Association is not happy with the compensation being offered to players for their likenesses.
EA has reportedly offered just $500 per player to include their likenesses in the game.
Now, according to On3’s Peter Nakos, the CFBPA is organizing a boycott of the game for players to not sign over their likenesses.
A source told On3 the cash pool for athletes who opt-in to the 2024 CFB video game would pay out to roughly $500. Sportico has also reported there are no royalties.
Now the CFBPA is organizing a boycott for athletes to not sign over their NIL.
Story: https://t.co/xC23OjzERE pic.twitter.com/LRkX5fNl3e
— Pete Nakos (@Pete_Nakos96) June 7, 2023
$500 may not sound like much money for the rights to an athlete’s likeness, but that would still make this pretty expensive for EA if they are including every single player.
There are currently 131 FBS schools in college football who all have expansive rosters. If we assume each team has 55 players (like an NFL roster), that means the game would have to include 7205 athletes.
Paying each of them $500 comes out to around $3.6 million spent on player likenesses.
While that’s a small amount compared to what the new game is likely to make, it would be surprising to see the compensation increase much with the money being spread between so many individuals and the possibility that some of college football’s bigger names could demand even more money.
After all of this time waiting for a new NCAA Football game, fans will likely just find themselves hoping this doesn’t make the wait any longer or prevent them from finally getting a game with real athletes in it.