EA Sports College Football 25 is now the best-selling sports video game in U.S. history.
According to data from Circana, the college football game, which was the highest-selling game of 2024, has also breached the threshold of the top 50 highest-selling video games of all time.
A standard copy of College Football 25 costs $69.99. The deluxe version costs $99.99, and the MVP edition is $149.99.
“For it to be the top game of the year so far in the U.S. is pretty stunning," Stephen Tolito, a 20-year video game reporter, told Front Office Sports. "You don’t see that kind of performance from sports games. They rank high, but they typically can’t knock off a Call of Duty or a Grand Theft Auto, or something like that. The days of Madden being the No. 1 game in America every year seemingly have long past."
Though Madden wasn't too far behind, as it ranked as the sixth-highest-selling game of 2024 and second among sports games.
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The sales of the EA Sports College Football 25 will have no impact to the players featured in the game, though, as their licensing deals do not include royalties.
Every athlete was paid a flat fee of $600 for their inclusion, as well as a free copy of the game.
This will, however, impact royalty payments made to the schools.
All 134 FBS institutions included in the game received payment for their involvement, and that payment was sectioned into four different tiers. Those tiers were based off Final AP Poll results for each year from 2014 to 2023.
When a team finished the year in the AP's Top 25, it received one point.
- Tier 1: 6-10 points
- Tier 2: 2-5 points
- Tier 3: 1 point
- Tier 4: 0 points
Schools within each tier were then given payments, as follows:
- Tier 1: $99,875.16
- Tier 2: $59,925.09
- Tier 3: $39,950.06
- Tier 4: $9,987.52
Documents acquired by cllct, via Freedom Of Information Act requests, did indicate schools would receive additional payments based on the success of the game. The tiered payments listed above were simply the minimum royalties the schools would receive.
A breakdown of how that money would be distributed was not listed, other than to say schools will get a 10% royalty on sales. And it was not stipulated whether those sales are net sales or gross sales.
At the peak of the EA NCAA Football franchise, “royalties from the video game category represented nearly 25 percent of the total non-apparel business," per a CLC document sent to all 134 FBS universities.
Given the success of the game, it is possible these schools did receive additional payments, though it is not known how much and wheter those payments were equal among institutions.
Matt Liberman is a reporter and video producer for cllct.