Year Two of Revenue Sharing Starts Today: What's Different on July 1

By faNILy Team · July 1, 2026

A year ago today, college sports flipped a switch. Under the House v. NCAA settlement, schools that opted in could start paying athletes directly, up to a cap of roughly $20.5 million per school in that first year, according to CBS Sports. Today the clock resets and year two begins.

Here's a quick rundown of what's new, what's the same, and what's still being argued about.

A cap that's built to grow

The per-school cap was never meant to stay flat. When the settlement took effect, CBS Sports reported that it estimated the cap would start at around $20.5 million per school in 2025-26 and could rise to nearly $33 million per school over the next decade. Whatever the exact number in a given year, it's the most a participating school can pay its athletes directly, across every sport combined.

How schools split that money is still their call. Last summer CBS Sports reported that power-conference schools were expected to send more than 70% to football. Some programs outside the power leagues are now going all in, too. Memphis athletic director Ed Scott announced in June that the Tigers will be at full revenue share in 2026-27, with $9 million earmarked for men's basketball and a $7 million football budget, per Yahoo Sports.

Who's enforcing it

The College Sports Commission (CSC), led by CEO Bryan Seeley, is still the referee. It runs NIL Go, the clearinghouse built with Deloitte that checks whether third-party NIL deals reflect fair market value and a valid business purpose.

That job got harder than expected in year one. In March, Front Office Sports reported that 78% of deals submitted between January 1 and the end of February involved "associated entities," the category that includes collectives, even though the system was designed expecting about 10% of deals to fall in that bucket. Seeley put it bluntly at the time: "The NIL market in college athletics is not a normal organic market."

A new threshold for smaller deals

In a June 23 memo, the CSC said that starting today it won't put deals valued between $600 and $15,000 through its range-of-compensation review unless and until an athlete has exceeded $50,000 in associated-entity deals in an academic year. On3 reported the change too. For a lot of athletes outside football and men's basketball, that could mean faster approvals on modest deals.

The associated-entity fight continues

Just last week, on June 25, a magistrate judge in the Northern District of California denied a challenge that sought to pull multimedia rights partners out from under CSC oversight. The court found that some of those partners do fit the definition of an associated entity, On3 reported, and the decision was expected to be appealed to Judge Claudia Wilken.

The money at stake is big. On3 noted that multiple rosters are projected to top $40 million for the 2026 season, with more than half of that coming from above-the-cap deals.

What it means for fans and athletes

The direct-pay era is normal now. Year two is less about "will this work?" and more about how schools compete within, and around, the cap.
Smaller deals may move faster. The new review threshold is aimed squarely at the everyday NIL deals that make up most of the market.
Enforcement is still a moving target. Court rulings and CSC policy updates can shift what's allowed mid-year.

For fans, the takeaway is that the athletes you follow are increasingly running real businesses, with contracts, reviews, and compliance rules attached. That's the backdrop for everything that happens in college sports this fall, and it's a big part of why we started building faNILy around direct fan-to-athlete engagement.