EA Sports College Football Devs Reportedly Fear Franchise Could Vanish by 2030

Developers behind EA Sports' College Football series are reportedly worried that the franchise might not survive past the current decade. According to Insider Gaming's Mike Straw, who spoke with senior sources connected to the football series, while the games are performing well, sales have been steadily declining with each new release since the highly anticipated debut in 2024. Although this isn't necessarily alarming—especially given the massive hype surrounding the 2024 title—the costs associated with making the game have been climbing.

In 2024, EA paid each player featured in the game $600, totaling around $7 million. Those expenses have since tripled, with NIL (name, image, likeness) rights for college athletes now costing $1,500 per player. Consequently, EA shelled out roughly $20 million on player likenesses for its latest game. On top of that, EA pays substantial fees to license bowl games, universities, and other elements, meaning tens of millions of dollars go toward securing the rights to use certain content rather than actual development costs.

To offset these rising expenses, EA has attempted to monetize key areas of the game, including College Football's single-player modes. This sparked significant backlash earlier this summer when players felt they were being pressured to pay to efficiently play single-player content. EA eventually backed down and reversed the changes, but stated it would rework these options and reintroduce them in future installments.

One source told Insider Gaming that microtransactions are planned to return in future College Football single-player titles, and expressed concern that this would anger players and drive them away from a game that is trying to grow. While College Football games are scheduled for the next few years, sources reportedly fear 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, with some believing the franchise has a strong future. EA Sports' College Football brand is a spiritual successor to the wildly 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 generated an extreme level of enthusiasm from fans.

That enthusiasm led College Football 25 to rake in big bucks and become the second best-selling game of 2024 in the United States, though it hasn't sustained that momentum year-over-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.