There's a new way you can help Wisconsin make money, and it's simple: play as the Badgers in the new EA Sports College Football '26 game. According to Matt Liberman, the company will now pay each school that opted into the game money based on how many times their team was chosen. That's it, and thus, Wisconsin fans who are gamers can literally raise NIL money for a player simply by playing as Badgers a lot.
EA Sports has released that it's royalties for schools will come from how many times users pick each school
According to Liberman, "The new royalties structure was revealed in documents obtained by CLLCT via Freedom of Information Act requests and confirmed by multiple schools." This is now being widely reported and it's something that is causing a lot of traction with fans of all the schools. It's like Spotify but with gaming.
Spotify pays its artists royalties based on the number of times their songs are streamed. The same is now true for this game. Fans choosing a school go into the bank for their royalties. How much? Well, it depends on the overall gameplay.
"“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. 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.”"Documents from CLLCT Sports
This means that the more the game gets played by all fanbases the royalty bank goes up and the profit share gets higher for the most played schools.
At the end of the day, fans have a direct impact on school royalties from the game. The good news for Badger fans is this season; the team is more fun to play with than last season's roster. Go get 'em and On Wisconsin!