Developers working on EA Sports' College Football franchise reportedly fear that the series may not live to see the end of the decade.
The report comes from Insider Gaming's Mike Straw, who spoke to senior-level sources working on or around the football series. He noted that, although the series is performing well, sales have gradually declined entry to entry since its highly-anticipated debut in 2024. While this isn't inherently a bad thing (or unexpected, given the extreme hype around the 2024 title), costs associated with the game have been rising.
Per the report, in 2024, EA paid each player featured in the game $600, amounting to roughly $7 million total. Those costs have tripled, with NIL (name, image, likeness) rights for college athletes now costing $1,500 per player. As a result, EA spent roughly $20 million on its players with its latest game. EA also pays boatloads of cash to license bowl games, universities, and more, meaning tens of millions of dollars goes into just having the right to use certain elements in the game as opposed to raw development costs.
This has led to EA trying to monetize key areas of the game, including College Football's single-player modes. This led to extreme backlash earlier this summer due to the fact players felt they were being pushed to pay to efficently play single-player content. EA eventually bent the knee and reversed course, but noted that it would retool these options and bring them back in future entries.
One source told Insider Gaming that microtransactions were planned to return in future College Football single-player titles, and feared that it would anger players, pushing them away from a game that is trying to grow. While there are College Football games planned for the next few years, sources reportedly fear that the franchise may be on its way out.
"We’re not FC. We’re not Madden. We don’t make the money they do, and everyone knows it," a source told Insider Gaming. "But it’s at the point where if we don’t find a way to keep players around and, in turn, make more, we won’t have anything. Forget in 10 years, I’m scared about if we have a game by the end of the decade. Games aren’t getting cheaper to make, and there’s the real concern with all of us that EA’s going to streamline and just have a few key franchises and dump everything else."
Insider Gaming noted that not all of its sources shared these fears and some believed there is a strong future with the franchise. EA Sports' College Football brand is a spiritual successor to EA Sports' highly 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 NCAA's final game and the debut of the new College Football series, which led to an extreme level of enthusiasm from fans.
It led to College Football 25 raking in big bucks and becoming the second best selling game of 2024 in the United States, though it hasn't sustained that momentum year-to-year. College Football 26 was the seventh best selling game in the United States in 2025, with College Football 27 currently placed in 10th this year. Of course, College Football also doesn't have as much global appeal as something like EA's FC series, which means its sales are primarily made up in the US.