EA Sports College Football 25 Release Date

EA Sports’ upcoming college football video is absolutely the most anticipated sports video game release in the past decade. Fans have patiently waited over 10 years to get their hands on any sort of college football video game.

While it is still too early to know the exact release date, EA Sports has officially confirmed that it is coming in “Summer 2024.” This is a bit of a delay from the originally expected release of summer 2023 but it gives them more time to polish the game and get it just right.

So that what’s been 100% confirmed as of today. However, we can make some educated guesses based on history to narrow that down further.

Past EA College Football Video Game Releases

Remember, it’s been 10 years since the last NCAA Football game was released. NCAA Football 14 was released all the way back on July 9th, 2013.

But before the long hiatus, NCAA Football games were released every year like clockwork.

While the upcoming game’s naming convention is switching from “NCAA Football” to “College Football,” it will still be made by EA Sports.

Here are the 10 most recent release dates of EA’s college football video games:

NCAA Football 05 – July 15, 2004
NCAA Football 06 – July 11, 2005
NCAA Football 07 – July 17, 2006
NCAA Football 08 – July 17, 2007
NCAA Football 09 – July 15, 2008
NCAA Football 10 – July 14, 2009
NCAA Football 11 – July 13, 2010
NCAA Football 12 – July 12, 2011
NCAA Football 13 – July 10, 2012
NCAA Football 14 – July 9, 2013

It doesn’t take a trained data scientist to figure out the pattern here. Even going back all the way to NCAA Football 98, every single release has been in July.

Furthermore, looking at the data, the NCAA Football games were always released on a Tuesday.

Updates To Release Dates In The Modern Era

A lot has changed in the gaming world since 2013 though. Ultimate Team had just been introduced and back then there was one version of the game that would cost $59.99.

If the upcoming EA Sports College Football video game follows the trend of other sports games, the base version of it won’t be released until a Friday.

But lucky you, if you just pay an extra $20 to $40 you’ll be able to get your hands on the game 3 days early (on a Tuesday).

To be fair to EA this is a trend that just about every major game publisher has pursued for the last 5 years.

From a profit standpoint this has worked brilliantly for Madden, FIFA, NBA 2K and MLB The Show.

The company can milk an extra $20+ dollars from their most hardcore fans while not alienating the casual fans.

Since this has worked so brilliantly for games that are released every year, you can bet that a similar strategy will be pursued for one of the most beloved sports video games of all time that skipped an entire console generation and hasn’t been released in over a decade.

Other Considerations For Release Date

EA Sports makes both the Madden NFL and College Football video games. Those games also share a huge overlap in who plays them.

If you buy Madden every year, there is a great chance you also will buy EA’s College Football game and vice versa.

So the smart business move is to put as much distance as is feasible between the two games.

Executives need to find the perfect date where the hype around the upcoming college football season is highest while still being far enough away to not cannibalize Madden sales.

Even with all of it’s well documented issues, Madden is still the 500 pound gorilla in the room and will widely outsell EA’s College Football game. Don’t expect EA to move back Madden’s release date too much to accommodate their college football game.

All of this is to say that just looking at historical release dates isn’t enough. You also have to look at the total days between the 2 major EA Sports football franchises because, again, a lot has changed in the gaming landscape over the past 10 years.

Let’s take a look at when Madden was released 10 years ago:

Madden NFL 25 – August 27, 2013
Madden NFL 13 – August 28, 2012

And compare now compare that to the past 2 Madden release dates:

Madden NFL 23 – August 19, 2022
Madden NFL 22 – August 20, 2021

Note: We are using the regular (Friday) release dates where you don’t have to pay extra. It doesn’t take into account the early 3 day (Tuesday) release.

You can see that in the modern era, Madden is now released a week earlier than it was a decade ago.

What we’ll need to do then is to count the total number of days between an NCAA Football release date and a Madden release date in the same year.

Before we move on, we should note for clarities sake that to celebrate 25 years of Madden games, EA decided to name what would normally be called “Madden 14” Madden 25. Madden 25 was released in the same year as NCAA Football 14.

NCAA Football 14 was released on July 9th and Madden 25 was released on August 27th. That is a total of 7 week (or 49 days) between the releases.

One year before that, NCAA Football 13 was released on released on July 10th and Madden 13 was released on August 28th. Again, that is 7 weeks or 49 days.

EA Sports will likely continue releasing Madden along the same schedule as they have in the recent past. That put’s the new Madden 2025 game with an expected release date of either August 16th or August 23rd of 2024.

Our expectation is that they will push it to August 23rd to give their new College Football game some room to breath.

Start Of Real NCAA Football Season

The first Saturday games of Week 1 during the 2013 college football season took place on August 31st, 2013.

The first Saturday games that are scheduled for Week 1 of the 2024 college football season will take place on August 31st, 2024.

Since these are identical, we can safely ignore the real start of college football season as a potential factor.

Finding That Perfect Release Date

Recall that there are 2 main factors for executives to optimize their release date.

Distance between the College Football game and Madden NFL
Hype surrounding the college football season

Their challenge is to find the perfect equilibrium point to maximize sales and in-game purchases between these 2 factors.

If the only consideration was to put time between the 2 games’ release then they could release the College Football game in March. It doesn’t take an MBA to realize that would be a terrible decision

Likewise, if the only consideration was hype around the college football season, they’d release the game right on top of Madden. Again, this would be a terrible decision.

EA Sports College Football 25 Release Date Prediction

By the summer of 2024, EA will have had at least 3 years of confirmed development on the game. We’ve looked at all of the data and put ourselves in the shoes of EA Sports’ executives.

For EA Sports’ College Football 25, we feel confident in a projected release date of Friday, July 12, 2024 with 3 day early access starting on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.

We are making that projection with about 70% confidence. I wouldn’t be wildly surprised though if the game ended up being released 1 week before or after our projected release date.