Developers working on EA Sports’ College Football franchise are reportedly worried the series won’t live until the end of the decade.
The report comes from Insider Gaming’s Mike Straw, who spoke with high-level sources working on or around the football series. He noted that while the series has been performing well, sales have gradually declined since its highly anticipated 2024 debut. While this in itself is not a bad thing (or unexpected, given the extreme hype surrounding the 2024 title), the costs associated with the game have increased.
According to the report, in 2024, EA paid $600 to each player in the game, making a total of around $7 million. Those costs have tripled, with NIL (name, image, likeness) rights for college athletes now costing $1,500 per player. As a result, EA spent around $20 million on its players with its latest game. EA also pays huge sums to license bowling games, colleges and more, meaning tens of millions of dollars are spent on just the right to use certain elements of the game, as opposed to raw development costs.
This led EA to attempt to monetize key areas of the game, including College Football’s single-player modes. This led to extreme backlash earlier this summer as players felt like they were being pressured into paying to effectively play single-player content. EA ultimately bent the knee and reversed course, but noted that it would revamp these options and bring them back in future entries.
A source told Insider Gaming that microtransactions were planned to return in future college football single-player titles and feared it would anger players, alienating them from a game that’s trying to grow. Although college football games are planned for the next few years, sources fear the franchise is on the verge of extinction.
“We’re not FC. We’re not Madden. We don’t make as much money as them, and everyone knows that,” a source told Insider Gaming. “But we’re at the point where if we don’t find a way to keep players and, in turn, earn more, we’re going to have nothing left. Let’s forget in 10 years, I’m worried about whether we’ll have a game by the end of the decade. Games aren’t getting any cheaper to make, and we’re all concerned that EA is going to streamline and only have a few key franchises and abandon everything else.”
Insider Gaming noted that not all of its sources shared these fears and some believed the franchise had a promising future. EA Sports’ College Football brand is the spiritual successor to EA Sports’ wildly popular NCAA football series that thrived in the 2000s and early 2010s before legal issues surrounding NIL rights effectively killed it. There was a 14-year gap between the last NCAA game and the debut of the new college football series, which sparked an extreme level of excitement from fans.
This allowed College Football 25 to rake in a lot of money and become the second best-selling game of 2024 in the United States, although it did not maintain that momentum from year to year. College Football 26 was the seventh best-selling game in the United States in 2025, with College Football 27 currently ranked 10th this year. Of course, College Football also doesn’t have as much global appeal as EA’s FC series, meaning its sales are primarily made in the United States.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. It covers all things entertainment, including games, movies, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
Gn tech
