Report: EA Sports CFB 26 will pay royalties based on schools' play time

Gamers will reportedly have a big impact on how much compensation schools receive for the usage of their names, images, and likenesses in the upcoming EA Sports College Football 26 video game.

Royalties will now be distributed based on how often schools are used in gameplay, according to Matt Liberman of Cllct. That means that the more popular teams are with gamers, the more money they'll be paid.

"For each CFB product released by EA Sports, we (CLC Learfield) will provide a percentage for each institution based on the games played for that institution as a percentage of the total games played across all institutions," says a document obtained by Cllct via the Freedom of Information Act. "This percentage of games played will become the final allocation percentage for each school that will be applied to the total gross royalties for all institutions received."

Royalties were formerly paid based on the previous 10 years of the final AP Poll rankings, with each school that opted into the game being placed in one of four tiers.

A total of 136 FBS schools and more than 14,000 players have opted into College Football 26. Each player will be paid $1,500 for their name, image, and likeness, more than double the $600 compensation they received from the previous iteration of the game.

College Football 26 is scheduled to release July 10.