Electronic Arts increased its investment in its renewed college football video game franchise Tuesday, saying it will more than double NIL payments to players included in this year’s edition. But there is little sign EA’s NCAA Basketball series is coming back anytime soon.
EA offered a college hoops game yearly between 1997 and 2009, going head-to-head with a similar offering from Take-Two Interactive.
Take-Two stopped making its College Hoops 2K series ahead of the 2008 season, while EA walked away after releasing its final NCAA Basketball title the next year. EA continued to make college football games until 2013, when it went on an 11-year hiatus.
There were more than legal issues at play in basketball being benched first—though Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit surely contributed. The college basketball video games lagged the college football games in sales; EA’s final installment reportedly failed to surpass 200,000 unit sales. For context, in FY2010, EA’s top five best-selling titles each eclipsed 5 million unit sales.
While EA captured its highest U.S. dollar figure for any sports game with College Football 25, there is no guarantee that success would translate to basketball. Additionally, it has stopped producing yearly NBA games for consoles amid Take-Two’s dominance in that arena, shedding its hoops expertise to focus elsewhere.
EA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, EA announced it would increase per-player football NIL payments from $600 to $1,500, which amounts to a total NIL expense increase of at least $10 million.
EA will go from paying a total of about $7 million to players for College Football 25 to likely shelling out more than $16 million in College Football 26, which is expected to release this summer. Those numbers do not include additional marketing expenses for star athletes asked to promote the game.
There are signs other video game publishers are interested in venturing beyond the gridiron, as Sony’s San Diego Studios has included eight NCAA schools in MLB The Show 25’s Road to the Show mode. That game was fully released this week, and the college baseball element was among SDS’s key selling points.
If EA does pivot course to resurrect college basketball, there would likely be a substantial gap between initial announcement and actual release. The company, which has endured stock market struggles this year, took three years from confirming a comeback for college football until it shipped College Football 25.
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