EA Sports And Ed O’Bannon Reach $60M Settlement In College Athletes Lawsuit

Sports video game giant EA Sports settled a lawsuit with 24,819 college athletes who were collectively awarded $60 million on Tuesday. Each individual athlete will receive about $1,600 under the settlement, after lawyers take their 30 percent cut, according to ESPN.com.

EA Sports And Ed O’Bannon Reach $60M Settlement

Thanks to the settlement, college athletes who appeared in EA Sports video games in 2013 and 2014 will now be financially compensated. The awards will be issued on a weighted scale, which means that if a player appeared in an earlier version of the game, they will receive less money than a player who appeared later in the franchise. The reason for this is that there was more specificity in the likenesses of players during the later versions of the games.

The lawsuit was led by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, former Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart and former Nebraska and Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller, each of whom will receive an estimated $15,000. Twenty-one other players, including former Alabama wide receiver Tyrone Prothro, will receive $5,00 for being class action representatives, according to an ESPN report.

O’Bannon was the one who brought the original suit against EA Sports claiming that collegiate athletes should get paid for use of their names, images and likenesses. The lawsuit also forced EA Sports to discontinue its NCAA video game franchises, the last one being “NCAA Football ’14,” which went on sale in July 2013.

Caption: 26 Mar 1995: UCLA FORWARD ED O”BANNON CELEBRATES BY CUTTING HIS PART OF THE NET AFTER THE BRUINS 102-96 WIN OVER UCONN IN THE NCAA WEST REGIONAL FINAL AT THE OAKLAND COLISEUM IN OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.