Players Era Festival 2025 schedule: St. John's, Houston, Auburn lead field battling for millions in NIL money

Matchups have been set for the most anticipated regular-season event of the 2025-26 college basketball season, sources told CBS Sports. The Las Vegas-based Players Era Festival will feature 18 teams, all playing three games, with the ultimate prize of an additional $1 million to the team that wins the event.

Every school is already assured $1 million for participating; the straightforward incentive for additional financial rewards for the champion is a trailblazing concept in college sports, enabled by NIL legislation. (Impacts of the House case settlement on Players Era can be read further down in this story.)

It's the second year of the groundbreaking event, which debuted in 2024 with eight teams (Alabama, Creighton, Houston, Notre Dame, Oregon, Rutgers, San Diego State, Texas A&M). Seven of those eight are back in 2025; A&M is no longer included after former coach Buzz Williams left for Maryland. The Terrapins are now in the fold.

Also joining this year: Auburn, Baylor, Gonzaga, Iowa State, Kansas, Michigan, St. John's, Syracuse, Tennessee and UNLV. Many of the teams are poised to be ranked at the start of the season and/or when Players Era tips in late November. Among the notable matchups on deck for this year, per sources: St. John's vs. Iowa State, Oregon vs. Auburn, Alabama vs. Gonzaga and Houston vs. Tennessee. Matchups for the event were inadvertently first leaked by the University of Michigan late Monday. The school published the schedule, only to soon delete its press release thereafter.

The 2025 event — which will be marketed as "November Mania" — will stage games at MGM Grand Garden Arena and Michelob Ultra Arena and be held the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week (Nov. 24-26).

Four women's teams — Duke, South Carolina, Texas and UCLA — will also participate in their own four-team tournament on Nov. 26 and 27. It's a boon for women's hoops, as South Carolina, Texas and UCLA are all coming off Final Four appearances last season.

This year's pot will be north of $20 million in NIL-related earnings, sources said, making it the most expensive regular-season event in the history of college basketball. The PEF was a world-rocker in college athletics a year ago, as news of its spread in the spring and summer of 2024. But despite skepticism over its funding and legitimacy, the tournament went off without a hitch and with every check cleared last season. Warner Bros. Discovery will again broadcast the event, per sources, with games on TNT, TBS and streaming on HBO Max.

While Wednesday's championship and consolation games are obviously subject to results, the first two days of the event are now set. Ten of the 18 teams are ranked in Gary Parrish's latest CBS Sports Top 25 And 1. Venues for the games will be determined later this summer, a source added.

2025 Players Era Schedule

All times ET

Monday, Nov. 24No. 22 Tennessee vs. Rutgers, 1 p.m.Baylor vs. Creighton, 2 p.m. No. 18 Kansas vs. Notre Dame, 3:30 p.m. No. 1 St. John's vs. No. 13 Iowa State, 4:30 p.m. No. 2 Houston vs. Syracuse, 6 p.m. No. 17 Oregon vs. No. 19 Auburn, 8 p.m. No. 14 Alabama vs. No. 21 Gonzaga, 9:30 p.m. No. 8 Michigan vs. San Diego State, 10:30 p.m. Maryland vs. UNLV, midnight

Tuesday, Nov. 25Rutgers vs. Notre Dame, 1 p.m. No. 13 Iowa State vs. Creighton, 2:30 p.m. No. 18 Kansas vs. Syracuse, 3:30 p.m No. 1 St. John's vs. Baylor, 5 p.m. No. 2 Houston vs. No. 22 Tennessee, 6 p.m. No. 8 Michigan vs. No. 19 Auburn, 8:30 p.m. No. 21 Gonzaga vs. Maryland, 9:30 p.m. No. 17 Oregon vs. San Diego State, 11 p.m. No. 14 Alabama vs. UNLV, midnight

Wednesday, Nov. 26Consolation/third-place game: 7 p.m. Championship game: 9:30 p.m.

> All other matchups dependent on Monday/Tuesday results

Teams that go 2-0 on Monday and Tuesday will pool into the championship round on Wednesday. With only two game results to determine who gets to play for the championship and the inevitability of more than two teams being 2-0 by the end of Tuesday, point differential, total points scored and points allowed will all affect the tally and serve as tiebreakers, just like in 2024. Oregon won the inaugural 2024 event over Alabama.

Saint Joseph's, which was previously scheduled to participate in Players Era, will instead travel to Vegas to play two games in a three-team showcase event on Nov. 20 and 22 at the Thomas & Mack Center, according to sources, and its games will also have NIL money attached. The Hawks will face UNLV and Syracuse. Saint Joseph's was bumped out after UNLV was added, leaving one extra team. The plan is for St. Joe's to participate in Players Era in 2026, when the field might increase to a whopping 32-team event, sources said. If the 2026 event does grow that large, the format would include group stage play (akin to World Cup and Olympics formats) over multiple weeks and multiple cities near the start of the 2026-27 season.

House settlement's impact on Players Era payouts

The long-awaited House case settlement means schools will legally and directly pay their athletes moving forward, effective July 1. The Players Era's payout structure last year involved the organization sending money to each school individually, instead of sending payments directly to players. Generally speaking, that's still how it's expected to work.

How schools wind up divvying up the money will be case-by-case. For the 2025-26 academic year, there is an expected $20.5 million cap for schools to pay their athletes at their discretion if they are willing and able. Many schools won't have $20.5 million in revenue, and in fact some schools that don't are already planning to put their portion of Players Era money into their overall rev-share cap, per sources at some of those programs.

Other schools — Alabama and Notre Dame, for instance — will have a $20.5 million cap due to their power of their football program and their respective television media rights deals. There is no room in their revenue-share cap to put the Players Era money, meaning the NIL earnings from the tournament will be subject to auditing by the firm Deloitte, which is overseeing all third-party deals for the NCAA moving forward, assisted through an online portal called NIL Go.

"UA has a standard agreement with Players Era for the basketball tournament that covers transportation and travel costs," Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne told CBS Sports. "Players Era has separate NIL agreements with the student-athletes for each of the participating schools to pay them for marketing, sponsorship, and endorsement activities that will be done separately from the event and in a manner consistent with the new NIL Go procedures."

One athletic director who asked not to be named brought up the issue of foreign-born college players playing in the event. Under their student visas, they're currently not eligible to be paid like American-born players. Schools may need to get creative with how their collective deals are paid out months after the Players Era Festival has finished.

There's also the matter of how the money is split amongst players, which will be a school-by-school decision.

"If you want to give a player $70,000, that would be clean, but one guy getting 400 (thousand), probably not," one head coach in the event told CBS Sports. "You would think there would probably be a line there. I'm not sure what it is, I'm not Deloitte, but north of six figures seems too much."

Keep in mind, it's the schools and/or the collectives that are signing the contracts, not the players. Still, an event of this size and notoriety will be monitored to see if any NIL payments are held up or flagged. Should all go through without a hitch, it will be a big moment for college athletics in its new era — and increase the changes that a bigger Players Era Festival can be staged in 2026.