College football players association boycotting new College football video game
- Thread starter RunninRichie
- Start date
If it ever gets made they'll just have to let players opt in and replace the rest with completely different random players. I think it's a longshot to think all players will agree to be in the game at a low rate. Low rate is all they can pay and make the game reasonably affordable
I'll just keep playing NCAA 14 revamped. With updated everything.
The game will be a good advertisement for any player on it... They are ignorant to admit that it will help them not harm them.. The game will make them more money not less... They are stupid to not understand this concept.... I can't understand what they want, do they want everyone to pay them millions for a game??? That is just plain stupid to think of...
Show's all they want is money that the average person can't afford to pay... If they ask for more money there will not be a game with their name on it.. I do not understand what they want... Maybe they are listening to too many lawyer's and not smart enough to understand this consept...
GBB
Show's all they want is money that the average person can't afford to pay... If they ask for more money there will not be a game with their name on it.. I do not understand what they want... Maybe they are listening to too many lawyer's and not smart enough to understand this consept...
GBB
Or maybe, they just want to be paid what they’re worth.
NFL players this year received $28,000 for being included in the Madden game. With ~1,700 players in the NFL, this means the pool of dollars spent on players for Madden was $47.6M.
For the NCAA game, EA is proposing only $5M for student athletes. That seems low. When NCAA Football was still being released, EA would sell ~3.8 times more copies of Madden than NCAA football. Assuming that split holds true today, the pool of dollars for college athletes should be $12.5M and not $5M.
That would work out to be about $1,250 per athlete; more than double what EA is currently offering. Seems to me EA is lowballing the players and it’s reasonable for them to push back to see if they can get more.
I remember when players thought it was cool to just be n the game back n the day.
All players are random after 4 years anyways so not a huge deal to me.
All players are random after 4 years anyways so not a huge deal to me.
*read the article*
*read the article*
*read the article*
There is no "college football players association". So there is no boycott. Why, they ain't employees, they can't organize and negotiate things like EA Sports payouts.
This is a gang, a shady group that has been trying to unionize CFB for years and years. They have always failed, they don't represent or speak for jack shit. Sure they want players to get money....so they can then slice off compulsory union dues, for themselves.
Always look for the story behind the story. This ain't about the ncaa video game.
*read the article*
*read the article*
There is no "college football players association". So there is no boycott. Why, they ain't employees, they can't organize and negotiate things like EA Sports payouts.
This is a gang, a shady group that has been trying to unionize CFB for years and years. They have always failed, they don't represent or speak for jack shit. Sure they want players to get money....so they can then slice off compulsory union dues, for themselves.
Always look for the story behind the story. This ain't about the ncaa video game.
You don’t need to be an employee, nor do you need to have an official group membership in order to attempt to organize a boycott. Just ask Anheuser-Busch.
As to the College Football Players Association, it’s not even two years old, so your comment about it being around for “years and years” is not accurate.
Now whether this particular effort to boycott the EA game is successful, remains to be seen.
Just like MLB blacking out regional games, they are shooting themselves in the foot with their shortsightedness. You need to make yourself more visible and accessible to the fan base if you want to maximize your brand and therefore your profit.
Completely accurate.
Same people who created this group were behind the effort to unionize the entire Pac 12 summer of 2020, using the covid shutdowns to push their goals. And were behind the failed attempt to unionize Northwestern football in 2013-2015 that was ended by the NLRB.
They change their organization names, put up former players as spokesmen so they can hide in the shadows, but it has been the same group of people who has been working to unionize college football for years. Ramofi Huma. Look who is behind National College Players Association. Or College Athletes Players Association.
These cabals come out with meaningless news releases just like this NCAA football video game boycott thing all the time. Complete BS, current players will be in the game next yr, and all CFB teams.
No, it’s not accurate.
For starters, it’s Ramogi Huma, not “Ramofi”. And he has nothing to do with the College Football Players Association. Jason Stahl started the College Football Players Association and they aren’t working together.
And it’s a bit odd to suggest that Huma has had a long string of failures. He’s a key reason that NIL exists today. You could argue he’s been as influential on college athletics over the past decade as anyone.
Lol...if you are even somewhat a gamer...you know how scummy EA is. They wont even pay some of their pro gamers hardly anything so this isnt surprising that they are doing this too.
I prefer to build dynasty's at POS schools like Army, FAMU, FAU. I even built a Transylvania dynasty. I have no use for any modern players.
They’d probably do just as well to use only SEC players and a smattering of other teams, and the rest could be randos.
Can’t wait to see what Don’Wale Robertson can do this season leading my pixels to the championship of the pixel bowl.
Most college football players likeness for this game isn't worth 50 cents. No one knows who the players are at popcorn state or cares if they are accurately represented.
I get the bigger name big school guys maybe pausing over 500 but most should be happy to be n the game as they aren't worth 500.
Just put random Muslims and Asians in the game. We’ll edit them out. Don’t pay the players a dime. Let the nerds and geeks do the hard work and we’ll chill until the downloads are available.
If you’re focused on the value of individual players at small schools, then you’re looking at this from the wrong angle.
The first question is: how much value is created for EA by being able to have an officially licensed product that includes the names and likenesses of real players?
Once that’s answered, the next question is: how much of that value should be shared with the players versus retained by EA?
It’s only after those two questions are answered that you begin to think about how to divide that amount amongst the players.
If you look at comparable group licensing situations, EA’s initial offer looks low. And the company EA contracted with to facilitate this (One Team Partners) also has a track record of bad group licensing deals for college athletes. One Team Partners’ jersey program gives only 2.8% of the jersey price to the athlete. That’s well below industry standard for pro athletes and also well below what competitors in the college space are offering. For example, The Brandr Group’s jersey program pays student athletes about 10% of the Jersey price.
I can understand why some are complaining about the amount EA is offering and it’s perfectly reasonable for student athletes to push back on this.
It most likely won't matter because there's going to be people who make the rosters, but there's always a scenario where EA doesn't put roster sharing into the new game and if they do that, I'm not buying the game.
$500 dollars is a lot of money for just putting your name on a pixel. If I was an athlete I'd be glad to just be in a CFB game.
$500 dollars is a lot of money for just putting your name on a pixel. If I was an athlete I'd be glad to just be in a CFB game.
Like other posters point out, that value is either nil or close. Within a week, and that's being generous, rosters will be built and players will get nothing.
Of course players can sue whomever created the roster but good luck suing end_user9555239 or gamerboi3596
Also you can't apply the pro pool to the college game because the numbers don't work. They have to license all the schools, logos, and stadiums which are exponentially more voluminous than the NFL. Then add in the ever churning roster of players. The finances run dry really quick.
So there really is no leverage to give the players much more.
The amount EA pays each school is very small compared to what EA pays the NFL and its teams for use of the NFL logo, team logos and jerseys, etc. The most recent deal will see EA pay the NFL and teams $1 billion over 5 years. For the college game, EA pays schools between $10K and $100K depending upon what Tier the school fall into. Even if you paid all FBS schools the Tier 1 rate, that’s still only ~$13M per year to the schools versus the $200M that NFL teams will average per year over the next 5 years.
Regardless, the pro pool does apply because it’s about applying percentages. NFL players receive a certain percentage of Madden sales each year. There’s no reason to expect college players to receive a significantly smaller percentage than the pros, especially when EA doesn’t have to pay the schools as much as they have to pay NFL teams.
And the piece about roster churn is irrelevant. There are 1,696 roster slots in the NFL and EA pays out based on the players in those slots at the time the game is released. If there’s 10% churn or 50% churn, it doesn’t have any impact on the amount EA pays out.
You're looking at the roster wrong. In the NFL most often if one slot opens it means the same person fills another. With the nil in place for that person, nothing really changes. So the pool of names have much less churn.
No, I’m not. I’ll explain it in college terms to see if that helps and for the sake of argument, let’s assume all college players decided to opt in and be included in the game.
Shortly before EA releases the game, they are going to freeze production and the rosters will be fixed based on information available at the time. Those players that are included in the game when it is released will receive a one-time, lump sum payment for allowing EA to use their likeness. There are also no ongoing royalty payments as part of the deal.
The following year, EA will come out with a new version and do the same thing, freezing the roster and paying the players that are included. Whether 10% or 90% of those players are new, it has zero impact on what EA pays out in aggregate.
Even if there were some type of mid season churn and EA decided to issue an updated roster, that doesn’t increase the amount that EA is required to pay out because they negotiate a lump sum amount as part of the group licensing deal. It’s up to the group licensing partner to manage disbursement of those funds to the players and to adjust payouts accordingly. For Madden, EA makes a payment to the NFLPA and then the NFLPA issues checks to active players and pro-rates the amounts as needed.
Churn is not an issue to EA based on how these deals are structured. EA pays a flat rate each year and their licensing partner disburses those funds to whomever gets included in the game.
Anyone wonder how the game will handle NIL and the crazy transfer portal?
I hope it also has the option to expand the playoff and custom conferences returns n it. Loved those features back n the day.
I hope it also has the option to expand the playoff and custom conferences returns n it. Loved those features back n the day.
I work on the CFBR mod for NCAA 14. EA hired 4 guys off our team to work on the new game.
If the licensing expires every year, I don't see how they have much margin at all even on Madden. Expand that to the difference in player and team volume and seems they have to cut the payout to have any margin at all. Then consider there is no collective bargaining entity with which they can uniformly deal and the whole thing sounds like a longshot to get done in the spirit of how people envision it done
They have enough margin for Madden to be profitable. Each new version sells a ton and they don’t have to rebuild the game from scratch each year.
For each year’s version of Madden, around 10% of sales is paid to the NFLPA. The NFLPA then pays a portion of that out to the active players included in the game and retains the rest as part of a fund to cover things like medical expenses for former players.
If EA can afford to transfer 10% of Madden’s sales to players, then they can also afford to transfer 10% of NCAA Football’s sales to student athletes. The per player payout for college athletes will be lower than the pros because there are so many more athletes, but there’s no reason for the size of the pool to be so much smaller on a percentage basis.
There is no mechanism they can use to make that happen unless schools are cleared to process nil payments. They'd have to keep track of thousands of guys, addresses etc. That's assuming they could ever even negotiate with several hundred, if not thousands, of individuals for their rights each year.
The NFL can just rely on the NFLPA.
One Team Partners is handling the group licensing. They’re one a few players that manage group licensing deals for college athletes.
EA Sports, in order to keep it manageable, should have tiered payouts. For example: Avg player gets $250. All conference gets another $500-$2k depending on which conference and first second or third team. All American gets another $2-$5k depending on first, second or third team and Heisman winner gets another $25k. There can be other additions for all defense, special teams etc, but by keeping it standardized, the best players get more, but they wouldn't have the expense of individual negotiations.
Last edited:
Are they handling the entire group? Im guessing it requires some affirmative opt in process. Guess holdouts will just be omitted
Yes, the current deal is between EA and One Team. EA would pay out $5M to One Team, and then One Team manages the opt-ins and the payments.
As far as holdouts are handled, who knows how that will work at the moment. It will probably depend upon how many players hold out and how many of them are higher profile players. If it ends up being just a small number of opt outs, then I could envision EA just omitting them and replacing them with randomly generated players.
But even if One Team pulls this off, it won’t be nearly as efficient as group licensing through the NFLPA and I would expect things to be pretty messy. Especially for this first go around.
Good info. 5 mil is a steal for ea. One team is definitely going in the hole unless they just build a website and say "sign up or else". If they do that, it's a pretty good deal even considering the cyber risk in fact and the insurance for the same; but the participation will likely be low and product suffer.
Will be interesting
To your last comment: ultimately, EA also has to sell their product.
There is also a much larger pool of players in college than the NFL - so paying players is going to be very costly. At what point do those costs get passed onto the consumer to purchase the product - and push customers away from buying because the game is too expensive?
Yeah, those outraged at what allegedly will be offered CFB players as compared to NFL guys need to do the math
CFB = 133 teams, 85 scholly per
NFL = 32 teams, 53 man rosters
Plus as I understand it the EA CFB games in the old days didn't sell annually as much as Maddens
CFB = 133 teams, 85 scholly per
NFL = 32 teams, 53 man rosters
Plus as I understand it the EA CFB games in the old days didn't sell annually as much as Maddens
Or perhaps you need to learn how these deals are typically structured. Then you’d understand why your argument doesn’t hold any water.
EA agrees to a pool of money, which is then divided amongst all of the participating players. College player payments will always be lower than NFL players because there are so many more college athletes that it dilutes the payouts.
That’s not the issue. The issue is that the pool of dollars for college players is disproportionately small relative to the pool of dollars for other deals like EA’s deal with NFL players. EA will be paying $100M each year to the NFLPA over the next 5 years but is offering only $5M in total for college athletes.
Anyone who is familiar with these types of deals understands that the percentage cut that EA is offering college students is well below industry standard.
As I already mentioned earlier in the thread, it’s not going to get very costly because that’s not how these deals work.
Regardless, the fact remains that this initial deal represents a lowball offer from EA. It is what it is. Whether the college players decide that’s acceptable remains to be seen.
