New royalties structure puts fans in charge of College Football 26 revenue for Clemson

Cade Klubnik is among the college football figures featured on the Deluxe Edition cover of College Football 26.

Brandon Rink · Assoc. Editor / Staff Writer · Saturday, June 07 2025

A new royalties structure for EA Sports' College Football 26 apparently has the fans in charge of what athletic programs will bring in from the lucrative game.

The outlet that broke the story on CFB 25 royalties last year says that how much a team is played in the next edition of the game will determine what those programs will rake in from royalties out of a $5 million pool across the sport.

From the story: One document states, “For each CFB product released by EA SPORTS, we (CLC Learfield) will provide a percentage for each institution based on the games played for that institution as a percentage of the total games played across all institutions. This percentage of games played will become the final allocation percentage for each school that will be applied to the total gross royalties for all institutions received.”

As of the reporting Friday, there were 1.7 billion streams of the CFB 25 game.

The example used by the news outlet cllct accounted for seven million games played for a particular school, which of an estimated 700 million, would reap $50,000. That would be a decrease in Clemson's case, which was slotted as a Tier 1 team in the sport last year for royalties and just short of $100,000 in CFB 25.

On3 estimates that the long-awaited return of the game brought more than $400 million to EA, which could produce it again on the agreement of revenue to players who opt-in.

CFB 26 will be released to all on July 10 with buying options for early access in the days prior.