EA Sports' College Football Devs Reportedly Fear the Franchise Could Disappear by 2030

Developers working on the EA Sports College Football franchise reportedly fear that the series may not live to see the end of the decade. This 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 since its highly-anticipated debut in 2024.

While this isn't inherently a bad thing, costs associated with the game have been rising dramatically. 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. Furthermore, EA pays substantial amounts of cash to license bowl games and universities, 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 financial pressure has led to EA trying to monetize key areas of the game, including College Football’s single-player modes. This resulted in extreme backlash earlier this summer due to players feeling they were being pushed to pay just to efficiently play single-player content. While EA eventually reversed course on some monetization efforts, sources told Insider Gaming that microtransactions were planned to return in future titles, a move feared to anger the player base and push them away from a game trying to grow.

Despite plans for the next few years, sources reportedly fear that the franchise may be on its way out. One source stated, “We’re not FC. We’re not Madden. We don’t make the money they do, and everyone knows it,” adding, “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... 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.”

EA Sports' College Football brand is a spiritual successor to the popular NCAA football series that thrived in the 2000s and early 2010s before legal issues surrounding NIL rights effectively killed it. The franchise saw an extreme level of enthusiasm upon its return, leading to strong initial sales, though momentum has not been sustained year-to-year.