There’s a reason why fans are mostly excited about the full unveiling of EA Sports College Football 25. It’s been quite a while since the last college football video game, and many feel that college football is as good as it’s been in a while, especially thanks to the college football playoff that’s been going on for a decade. But there was always a “sticky wicket,” if you will, with the original titles. While they tended to use the players’ likenesses within the games and post the best players on the cover like the NFL version did, they never paid the players to use their likenesses.
However, that has officially changed. Thanks to the “Name-Image-Likeness” rules that now apply to the game, known as the NIL ability, players can now get paid for submitting their likenesses and names to the players in EA Sports College Football 25. And guess what? Not only has that happened, it’s happened in droves! It was revealed yesterday that over 10,000 players have agreed to put their names and likenesses into the upcoming title, which is an insane amount of players.
So, what are they getting for being in the title? Well, they get $600 and a free copy of the game when it arrives. At first, that might not seem like much. But if you think about the business side of things, EA Sports wouldn’t have been able to pay “big money” just to get the players into the title, making the profit margin much smaller. By doing this smaller but still fair system, players can both be in the game and get the game for free…which is fair because they’re a big part of why people are getting it. So far, it seems like EA Sports is happy with what has occurred:
“The response to the athlete opt-in opportunity for EA Sports College Football 25 has been phenomenal,” Daryl Holt, senior vice president and group general manager for EA Sports’ Tiburon Studios and American football division, noted to ESPN. “In the little over one week, over 10,000 athletes across the FBS have opted-in to the offer, with more saying ‘yes’ every hour. We’re excited to welcome more athletes in the weeks ahead and to debut this first class of athletes in the game when it launches this summer.”
Believe it or not, they still need more players to join the game, and more are expected to come in the upcoming weeks and months, especially once incoming Freshmen fully enroll in college.
