College basketball’s Players Era Festival tightens its chokehold on November

Less than a year after its debut, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the Players Era Festival is here to stay, and that it’s going to change college basketball in November for the foreseeable future.

The event, which takes place in Las Vegas and offers $1 million in name, image, and likeness compensation for all teams participating and an additional $1 million for the winner, made some waves in 2024 when its 8-team event featured national powers like Oregon, Alabama and Houston. It then made tsunamis when it announced it was expanding in 2025, and teams like Baylor and Iowa State pulled out of the Maui Invitational — long considered the Granddaddy of all November college basketball events — in order to participate.

The 2025 version of the event will feature an 18-team field that is loaded with national championship contenders like St. John’s, Houston, Michigan and Gonzaga. There will also be a 4-team women’s event comprised of perennial national powers South Carolina, UCLA, Duke and Texas.

The impact of the expansion is already being felt by tournaments like Maui and the Battle 4 Atlantis, which are fielding far less competitive fields this Thanksgiving Week than fans have become accustomed to seeing.

This year’s Maui field? Arizona State, Boise State, Chaminade, North Carolina State, Seton Hall, Texas, USC, and Washington State. Not terrible, but not jam packed with teams entering the season with the weight of Final Four expectations.

This year’s Atlantis field? Virginia Tech, Saint Mary’s, Vanderbilt, South Florida, VCU, Colorado State, Western Kentucky, and Wichita State. Yikes.

The writing was already on the wall before Monday’s news that Louisville, Miami, Missouri, Ohio St. and Virginia have signed four-year deals to participate in the Players Era Festival beginning in 2026. The 2026 event now has 24 teams — including reigning national champion Florida — committed to participating, and is expected to feature 32 squads when all is said and done.

It’s easy to label the PEF as a “disruptor,” but the reality is that the event is filling an unavoidable role that was created by conference realignment, NIL and the NCAA’s new revenue sharing model. If the powers that be behind the Players Era Festival didn’t put these wheels in motion, someone else was going to.

Seth Berger, the event’s co-founder, has stated that he wants the Players Era Festival to essentially serve as the first leg of a college basketball Triple Crown, with the other legs being conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament. The biggest difference (of many) between that first leg and the other two is the financial component.

Oregon was the champion of the first Players Era Festival, and Ducks head coach Dana Altman said the program was able to boost the NIL package of every player on the team as a result. He wasn’t the only one who came away from the debut event impressed.

“When you’re able to pay players and when you’re able to use the NIL for a good reason and have people come out here and [it’s] crazy competition, Hall of Fame coaches, All-American players, this is the best place to be right now,” Texas A&M forward Henry Coleman III said. “I know there’s Maui and stuff going on, but I think right here is the best place to be.”

With Monday’s news, it certainly appears like Vegas may remain the Feast Week place to be for the foreseeable future.