House v. NCAA Settlement: Back Pay, Revenue Sharing, and NIL Rules

The House v. NCAA settlement is a $2.78 billion class-action agreement, approved on June 6, 2025, by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, that requires the NCAA and its Power Five conferences to pay back damages to former Division I athletes for lost name, image, and likeness earnings and, for the first time, permits schools to share revenue directly with current players. Revenue sharing began July 1, 2025. The back-pay portion is on hold while female athletes’ Title IX appeals move through the Ninth Circuit.

What the Settlement Does

The deal has two prongs, and they operate on different tracks.

The first is money for the past. The NCAA and its co-defendant conferences agreed to pay $2.78 billion over ten years, or roughly $280 million annually, to Division I athletes who competed between June 15, 2016, and September 15, 2024.¹ Of that, $1.976 billion goes to an NIL Settlement Fund covering broadcast NIL, video game NIL, and lost NIL opportunity claims. A separate $600 million funds “additional compensation” claims, which is essentially a pay-for-play category.²

The second prong is money going forward. Beginning July 1, 2025, participating Division I schools may pay athletes from their athletic department budgets — television revenue, ticket sales, merchandise income.³ That is the piece that ended amateurism as college sports had defined it.

Who Gets Back Pay and How Much

Eligible athletes fall into three classes. The Football and Men’s Basketball Class covers full scholarship athletes who competed on FBS football or Division I men’s basketball teams at Power Five institutions, plus Notre Dame. The Women’s Basketball Class covers the same at Power Five women’s basketball programs. The Additional Sports Class includes any athlete who competed on a Division I team during the eligible period. Members of military service academies, NCAA officers and employees, and Judge Wilken’s immediate family are excluded.⁴ Class members were automatically enrolled; the deadline to opt out or object passed on January 31, 2025.⁵

The money is not distributed evenly. Ninety-five percent of the damages are earmarked for Power Five football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball. Football alone takes 75 percent, men’s basketball 15 percent, and women’s basketball 5 percent. The remaining 5 percent covers every other Division I sport.¹

What that looks like at the individual level:

Football and men’s basketball players at Power Five schools: averages of roughly $91,000 for broadcast NIL, $40,000 for pay-for-play, and up to $4,000 for video game NIL. Lost NIL opportunity payments, available to athletes who played both before and after the July 2021 NIL rule changes, can range from under a dollar to $800,000.¹
Women’s basketball players at Power Five schools: averages of about $23,000 for broadcast NIL and $14,000 for pay-for-play, with lost opportunity claims reaching up to $300,000.¹
Athletes in the Additional Sports Class: average pay-for-play estimates around $80, though some lost opportunity claims can reach nearly $1.9 million for high-profile individuals.¹

These figures remain subject to change based on the appeals, updated data, and the court’s fee rulings.

When the Back-Pay Money Actually Arrives

Not yet. The claims window was set to open October 1, 2025, but the back-pay distribution is frozen.

On June 11, 2025, eight female athletes filed the first appeal in a California federal court, arguing that a distribution sending roughly 90 percent of damages to male athletes violates Title IX’s gender equity requirements. Kacie Breeding of Vanderbilt, Kate Johnson of Virginia, and several athletes from the College of Charleston were among the appellants. Their attorney, John Clune, said Title IX was “deliberately ignored” during the settlement negotiations. Lead plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Kessler countered that “the Title IX issues do not belong in this antitrust case” and were “thoroughly considered and properly rejected by the district court.”⁶

Additional appellants joined. As of mid-2026, three consolidated sets of appeals are pending before the Ninth Circuit, with multiple groups of female athletes raising Title IX objections and some parties asserting broader antitrust challenges. Male athletes have separately appealed the back-pay calculations and the adequacy of the notice and opt-out process. On November 13, 2025, Judge Wilken overruled post-approval Title IX objections, ruling that the court lacked authority to modify the settlement, but she noted that class members remain free to bring separate Title IX lawsuits because those claims were not released by the agreement.⁷

The appeals triggered an automatic stay on all back-pay distributions. Athletes are now expected to wait a year or more for payments while the Ninth Circuit works through the case.¹ Reply briefs in the initial appeals were due in February 2026, with a second round of briefing extending into spring 2026.⁸ Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled.

Revenue sharing is unaffected by the stay and is operating on schedule.

How Revenue Sharing Works

The annual cap is set at 22 percent of the average Power Five school’s athletic revenue. That started at approximately $20.5 million per school for the 2025-26 academic year and increases by about 4 percent annually, projected to exceed $30 million per school by 2034-35.² Total revenue sharing across all Power Five institutions over the ten-year settlement period could reach an estimated $19.4 billion.⁹

The settlement does not tell schools how to divide their share among sports or individual athletes. There are no sport-specific caps. Institutions must report all payments through a Cap Management Reporting System and complete an annual compliance attestation.¹⁰

Scholarship limits were eliminated. The NCAA retained the ability to impose new roster limits, with exemptions for athletes already rostered or recruited by April 7, 2025.² By the opt-in deadline, 319 schools — 82 percent of Division I — had agreed to participate.¹

NIL Enforcement Under the New System

Enforcement of NIL rules no longer rests with the NCAA. A new independent body, the College Sports Commission, opened on July 1, 2025, led by CEO Bryan Seeley.¹¹ The CSC oversees revenue-sharing compliance, roster limits, and the vetting of third-party NIL agreements through a technology platform called NIL Go, built and operated by Deloitte.³

If you’re an athlete signing a third-party NIL deal worth $600 or more, you must report it to NIL Go within five business days. The CSC then reviews whether the deal serves a “valid business purpose,” reflects fair market value, and whether the paying entity qualifies as an “associated entity” — someone closely affiliated with a school’s athletics program for recruiting or retaining athletes. Deals that fail any of these tests can be rejected. Athletes who proceed with rejected deals risk losing NCAA eligibility.¹²

The commission’s early months were rough. Within two weeks of launching, it issued and then rolled back a ban on payments from NIL collectives. In September 2025, the CSC announced it had cleared 8,000 deals worth $80 million, then revised the figure to 6,000 deals worth $35 million, citing a “clerical error.”¹³ Kansas State’s Julie Owen called the NIL Go website’s functionality “less than ideal,” saying it makes administrators’ jobs harder and is too complicated for athletes.¹¹ By its first ten months, the CSC had cleared 26,556 deals worth $242.35 million while declining 1,153.¹⁴ In October 2025, the CSC also launched an anonymous tip line through the firm RealResponse for reporting potential violations.

The first major enforcement fight tested the associated-entity concept. Eighteen Nebraska football players had NIL deals with Playfly Sports, the university’s multimedia rights partner, rejected by the CSC. The deals were collectively worth more than $1 million.¹⁴ The players, represented by Husch Blackwell, challenged the rejections in arbitration.¹⁵ On May 11, 2026, a neutral arbitrator ruled in the CSC’s favor, holding that Playfly qualifies as an associated entity, that the deals lacked a valid business purpose because they did not involve goods or services offered to the general public for profit, and that the contract structure amounted to “warehousing” — paying for NIL rights to use later rather than activating them. Seeley called the ruling “influential” but stopped short of calling it formal precedent.¹⁶

The broader question — whether multimedia rights partners like Learfield, Playfly, and JMI Sports, along with third-party brand sponsors such as banks and airlines, should count as associated entities at all — is still open in federal court. Class counsel argues they should not. The NCAA and the conferences say it depends on the facts of each arrangement. U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins was set to hear arguments on May 27, 2026.¹²

Watch Out for Third-Party Claim Buyers

Class counsel at Hagens Berman has warned that third-party companies are contacting athletes to buy out their settlement claims for cash now. The firm is not affiliated with those companies and cannot vouch for them. If a company approaches you, talk to a parent, attorney, or trusted advisor before signing anything. The settlement administrator will not intervene in disputes between athletes and third parties.¹⁷

What Could Still Change

Three parallel developments could reshape what the settlement means in practice.

Johnson v. NCAA. A Third Circuit case is testing whether college athletes qualify as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. On July 11, 2024, the Third Circuit ruled that the “tradition of amateurism” does not automatically bar athletes from asserting FLSA claims and directed the district court to apply an economic realities test grounded in common-law agency principles.¹⁸ The plaintiffs filed a third amended complaint in November 2024, and the NCAA was due to respond in early 2025.¹⁹ If athletes are ultimately classified as employees, the revenue-sharing framework would face new Title IX and labor law questions.

The SCORE Act. Representatives Janelle Bynum and Gus Bilirakis introduced the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act (H.R. 4312) on July 10, 2025. The bill would codify the settlement’s core terms into federal law, declare that college athletes are not employees, give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption, and preempt state NIL laws. It would cap agent compensation at 5 percent and require schools to maintain at least 16 varsity sports teams as of July 1, 2027.²⁰ A House subcommittee held a legislative hearing on June 12, 2025, with a markup scheduled for July 15, 2025.²¹ The bill faces opposition from the American Economic Liberties Project, minority lawmakers, and professional sports players’ associations, who say the antitrust exemption is too broad.

Title IX guidance. The Biden administration issued guidance in January 2025 stating that Title IX applies to all compensation schools provide to athletes. The Trump administration rescinded that guidance on February 12, 2025, leaving the legal application of Title IX to revenue-sharing payments unsettled.²² A July 24, 2025 executive order directs that university revenue sharing should “protect women’s and non-revenue sports and maintain or increase scholarship opportunities for underrepresented athletes,” though its enforceability has not been tested.²³

For now, the split holds. Revenue sharing is live. Back pay is frozen. The rules keep moving.

1
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. NCAA NIL Settlement Payout Estimates
2
U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal. Opinion and Order Granting Final Approval of Settlement
3
Duke Chronicle. Duke Athletics House v. NCAA Settlement Approved
4
College Athlete Compensation. House Frequently Asked Questions
5
Athletes.org. House v. NCAA
6
The New York Times / The Athletic. House NCAA Settlement Appeal Title IX
7
Venable. A Settlement That Remains Unsettled – Title IX
8
College Sports Litigation Tracker. College Sports Litigation Tracker
9
NCAA. In Re College Athlete NIL Litigation Settlement Agreement
10
NCAA. Phase Seven Settlement Question and Answer
11
AP News. College Sports Watchdog Sets Up Tip Line for Confidential Reporting of Violations in New NIL Era
12
Sportico. NCAA House Settlement Multimedia Rights NIL Dispute
13
U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Trahan Letter to CSC on Denied NIL Deals
14
CBS Sports. CSC Wins Arbitration Nebraska Football NIL Deals
15
WOWT. 18 Nebraska Football Players Challenge NIL Deal Rejections in Arbitration
16
1011 Now. College Sports Commission Wins Key NIL Arbitration Case Brought by Nebraska Football Players
17
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. Third-Party Contracts and Settlement Claims for NCAA House Class Members
18
Justia. Johnson v. The National Collegiate Athletic Association
19
Venable. Johnson v. NCAA Student-Athlete Employment
20
U.S. Congress. SCORE Act Discussion Draft
21
U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. Chairmen Guthrie and Bilirakis Announce CMT Subcommittee Markup on Bipartisan SCORE Act
22
Duane Morris. Navigating Title IX Implications of NCAA Settlement and NIL
23
Morgan Lewis. From Settlement to Scrutiny – Employment NIL and Title IX in College Sports