2.75 billion dollars and 20 million per school: college sports starts paying players

The case began with a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against the NCAA and five college conferences. The plaintiffs were Grant House, a swimmer at Arizona State University, and Sedona Prince, a basketball player at Texas Christian University. They sought damages for the use of their likeness and an injunction to lift restrictions on sharing broadcast revenue.

Judge Claudia Ann Wilken got the case. She had ruled for the plaintiffs before, in O'Bannon v. NCAA in 2014 and Alston v. NCAA in 2020. In November 2023, Wilken granted class-action status on the damages portion. That expanded the group to all Division I athletes who played after 2016, with a four-year statute of limitations.

The sums and the model

On May 23, 2024, the NCAA voted for a settlement worth 2.75 billion dollars. Universities gained the right to share revenue with Division I athletes who played from 2016 onward, up to 20 million dollars per institution. Judge Wilken gave the settlement final approval on June 6, 2025.

Athletes have another source of money. A separate market grew up around name, image and likeness rights, known as NIL. California was the first state to regulate the matter. In September 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 206, the Fair Pay to Play Act, written by senators Nancy Skinner and Steven Bradford. The NCAA responded with an interim policy after the Alston ruling, and states began passing their own rules.

Under the revenue-sharing model, NIL deals now reach 20.5 million dollars a year for a single athlete. A decade earlier, sums like these were unthinkable in college sports. For decades the NCAA defended the amateur model, limiting benefits to scholarships and modest stipends.

Data as a condition

The third piece of the puzzle is less visible, but central here. Without measurement there is no division. To settle an athlete's value against the school and the conference, you need a stream of data from college competition. It was no accident that in May 2018 the NCAA announced a statistics initiative for its 1,100 members, run together with Genius Sports. The company was responsible for modernizing how schools and conferences use game statistics.

College sport got television first, then money, and finally the measuring apparatus that allows that money to be divided.

The consequences are visible in disputes still being settled: taxation, the effect on Title IX, competitive balance, and the question of whether NIL blurs the line between college and professional sport. An American university is no longer just a school. It is an entity that settles the value of an athlete.