Big tournament, bigger money: How the Players Era event is changing college basketball in just its second year

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NIL tourny, good bad don’t know but lots of money in play for schools and the players. Bolded/italics portion below by me.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/big-tournament-bigger-money-how-the-players-era-event-is-changing-college-basketball-in-just-its-second-year/

This year, Players Era swells from eight to 18 men’s teams, with two arenas combining to host nine games per day and airing on TNT and truTV the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday of Thanksgiving week.

Four big-brand women’s teams are also flying into the desert and will have their moment on the Vegas stage: No. 2 South Carolina, No. 3 UCLA, No. 4 Texas and Duke will compete Wednesday and Thursday. Event organizers have committed north of $20 million in participation and prize money, an astonishing payout. If you think that’s ambitious, just know that 2024 and 2025 are ramp-ups for what the event’s founders are building for 2026 and beyond: a whopping 32-team men’s event that will combine World Cup-style pool play (eight teams in four pods) before feeding into bracket competition across a near-three-week span every November.

Should it go off as scheduled, the Players Era Festival will be, by far, the biggest regular-season event in the sport’s history, with participation/prize money purportedly upward of $30 million for schools and players.

College hoops’ nonconference calendar is profoundly evolving; Players Era is the hand forcing the market to adapt. The event forced the NCAA to change its rules about how many teams from conferences could play in an MTE and if teams could play in the same event year after year.

There will surely be more big money-driven events emerging in the next couple of years, while November mainstays — most notably the long-running and nostalgia-inducing Maui Invitational, in addition to tournaments like the Battle 4 Atlantis, the ESPN Events Invitational, the Charleston Classic and others — will be forced to update their formats and philosophies. If they don’t, they’ll be at risk of dissolution or, if they can remain operational, could see their fields reduced to low-end high-majors and mid-major schools.

The effects are already being seen with those tournaments this week: Maui’s tournament is a stark downgrade from last season’s epic eight-team field. The 2025 Battle 4 Atlantis bracket is objectively its weakest ever.

“It’s going to hurt the sport overall,” said one event operator on background, who has been and continues to be skeptical of Players Era. “When you hurt the traditions, you hurt the sport.”

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TheAthletic with an article on this as well, few sections:
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Berger said next season’s 32-team field — the format he anticipates for Players Era for the foreseeable future — will feature eight four-team pools that compete over the two or so weeks leading up to Thanksgiving week, also known as Feast Week. Then, the best of each pool will fly to Vegas for an eight-team bracket to crown an ultimate champion. That means even the teams that don’t qualify for the Las Vegas portion still receive three high-quality nonconference games to bolster their NCAA Tournament resumes. Under the new format, not every team will receive $1 million, according to CBS Sports.

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Last season, for all the attention on the actual games in Las Vegas, there was arguably more focus on Dec. 5, the day payments were supposed to hit.

But once they did, apprehension about Players Era seeming too-good-to-be-true dissipated. While skepticism may remain in some corners, on Monday, the Big 12 and Players Era announced a five-year equity deal, guaranteeing the Big 12 eight slots each season, with Players Era paying players on those teams over $50 million through 2030.

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# A college basketball tournament in Vegas pays players, and shakes up the sport

Therein lies another hidden detriment, according to multiple high-major staffers and coaches, of going to an event like Maui or Atlantis. Not only are teams spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to go play these games, but in doing so, there’s also the opportunity cost of not playing home games or lucrative neutral-site deals. Hypothetically, say a school pays $500,000 to go to the Maui Invitational for a week. That isn’t its only cost; it’s also the additional $1 million it could’ve earned by playing two home games, or the additional $1.5 million it could’ve earned by playing a standalone neutral site.

That only exacerbates the financial strain on athletic departments that, more than ever, are desperate for cash to keep up with their rivals.
“College sports has never been more of an arms race,” Miller-Tooley said. “Teams want to play neutral-site games that they’re going to get paid (for).”

Asked this week about Houston’s participation, Sampson was abundantly clear about why the Cougars are in Las Vegas.
“We had no choice. Have you seen our budget? Have you seen our fundraising? We have to raise our money,” Sampson said. “I had to get our administration to understand how important it was to follow through on the decision I made to be in this tournament. Sign the forms. Sign them today. ‘Well, we’re not quite sure …’ It doesn’t matter.”

Berger said Players Era is profitable this year — through a combination of ticket sales, sponsorships and television partnerships — with room for growth in coming seasons. While some skepticism may linger about the tournament long term, the more teams join, and the more it becomes a staple of the November nonconference slate, the more optimistic Berger is about the future.
“(There’s a) number of teams we have who have said to us, we’re building our Quad-1 schedule moving forward around Players Era,” Berger said, “as opposed to fitting in Players Era.”

As for what becomes of Maui? Of Atlantis? Of the non-paying multi-team event structure in general, one that ruled college basketball’s November slate until last season?
Nobody knows — because nobody ever saw the current landscape coming, either.