Mar 11, 2025
Dallas, TX (March 11, 2025) – Learfield, EA SPORTS, and OneTeam Partners earned Sports Business Journal’s prestigious Sports Business Tech Award for Best Technology Collaboration. This honor recognizes the partnership between the three companies in delivering a groundbreaking student-athlete Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) commercial opportunity through the opt-in and management of athlete participation for the EA SPORTS College Football 25 video game. Since its launch in July 2024, EA SPORTS College Football 25 has become the best-selling North American sports video game title of all time.
The award-winning collaboration leveraged Learfield’s proprietary Compass NIL platform, which provided the technological infrastructure to handle athlete opt-ins at scale and maintain up-to-date rosters for college football players featured in the game. Through this partnership, OneTeam Partners, a leader in representing athlete commercial rights, managed the monumental task of sending out individual offers, aggregating individual player opt-ins for the game, making payments, and communicating other game opportunities to more than 16,000 student-athletes across 134 FBS college football teams, resulting in the largest collegiate NIL product program to date. EA SPORTS’ industry-leading gaming technology and authentic recreation of the college football game experience, including the integration of student-athlete NIL, helped power the game to record-breaking sales.
“This recognition underscores the power of collaboration in driving innovation, which has helped bring back one of the most popular video games of all time,” said Cory Moss, President of Brand Management & Marketing at Learfield. “We are thrilled to be able to play a significant role in this process through our Compass NIL platform, which has helped to facilitate meaningful NIL opportunities for student-athletes at a critical time in the current college athletics landscape.”
Learfield’s Compass NIL platform is an integrated, industry-leading NIL solution that helps to facilitate NIL activity for over 35,000 student-athletes, representing over 400 schools. In the past year alone, the Compass NIL platform has delivered NIL commercial opportunities and payments to over 22,000 student-athletes through a combination of real NIL brand deals and licensed NIL merchandise, including the EA SPORTS College Football 25 game.
The Sports Business Awards: Tech celebrates the most innovative and influential technology partnerships shaping the future of sports. Learfield, OneTeam Partners, and EA SPORTS’ collaboration exemplifies the potential of technology to revolutionize gaming, fan engagement and athlete representation in the ever-evolving landscape of collegiate sports.
About Learfield
Learfield is the leading media and technology company powering college athletics. Through its digital and physical platforms, Learfield owns and leverages a deep data set and relationships in the industry to drive revenue, growth, brand awareness, and fan engagement for brands, sports, and entertainment properties. With ties to over 1,200 collegiate institutions and over 12,000 local and national brand partners, Learfield’s presence in college sports and live events delivers influence and maximizes reach to target audiences. With solutions for a 365-day, 24/7 fan experience, Learfield enables schools and brands to connect with fans through licensed merchandise, game ticketing, donor identification for athletic programs, exclusive custom content, innovative marketing initiatives, NIL solutions, and advanced digital platforms. Since 2008, it has served as the title sponsor for the acclaimed Learfield Directors’ Cup, supporting athletic departments across all divisions.
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