There’s a new player in the game of early season college basketball events, and it has disrupted the typical Thanksgiving week highlights like the Maui Invitational and Battle 4 Atlantis. While those tournaments are still happening, the best field is now at the 2025 Players Era Festival, an event that puts cold hard cash in the NIL purses of its participants and offers resume-boosting opportunities months before Selection Sunday.
Players Era Festival scores, schedule, and updates from college basketball’s $30 million event
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Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
The Players Era Festival debuted last season as an eight-team tournament that featured an epic final when Oregon defeated Alabama. The million-dollar guarantees to every participant sounded too good to be true to some, but every program ended up being paid what they were promised. The Players Era Festival has now expanded to 18 men’s teams, and also includes four women’s teams for the first time. It’s not a traditional bracket, but instead splits the men’s teams into two groups of nine before expanding to 32 teams next year.
Monday Nov. 24 and Tuesday Nov. 25 are loaded with great men’s college basketball matchups from noon until after midnight. The top finisher in each group will meet on Wednesday for the championship game.
The championship game will be between two 2-0 teams that wins a series of tiebreakers, and there’s matchups for third place and every other consolation game included, too. The lowest-finishing teams will conclude the tournament on Thursday. Here’s what the tiebreaker order looks like:
- 1) Overall record
- 2) Head-to-Head
- 3) Plus/Minus Tiebreaker with maximum of 20 points
- 4) Total Points Scored
- 5) Total Points Allowed
- 6) AP Poll ranking
We’ll update the Wednesday and Thursday schedule once it’s announced. Here’s the schedule for the 2025 Players Era Festival for now.
Players Era Festival money
Competing in the Players Era Festival guarantees at least $1 million for every team’s NIL funds. The champion will get $1 million extra, while the second place team will get $500K and the third place team will get $300K.
Men’s Players Era scores
- Monday, Nov. 24
- Tennessee 85, Rutgers 60
- Baylor 81, Creighton 74
- Kansas 71, Notre Dame, 61
- Iowa State 83, St. John’s 82
- Houston 78, Syracuse 74
- Auburn 84, Oregon 73
- Gonzaga 95, Alabama 85
- Michigan 94, San Diego State 54
- Maryland 74, UNLV 67
- Tuesday, Nov. 25
- Notre Dame 68, Rutgers 63
- Iowa State 78, Creighton 60
- Kansas 71, Syracuse 60
- St. John’s 96, Baylor 81
- Tennessee 76, Houston 73
- Michigan 102, Auburn 72
- Gonzaga 100, Maryland 61
- San Diego State 97, Oregon 80
- Alabama 115, UNLV 76
- Wednesday, Nov. 26
- Iowa State 95, Syracuse 64
- Houston 66, Notre Dame 56
- Third plance game: Kansas 81, Tennessee 76
- Auburn 85, St. John’s 74
- Championship game: Michigan 101, Gonzaga 61
- Baylor 91. San Diego State 81
- Maryland vs. Alabama, 12 a.m.
- Thursday, Nov. 27
- Game 6 Consolation, 2 p.m.
- Game 7 Consolation, 4:30 p.m.
Additional men’s matchups will air Nov. 26 and Nov. 27 based on the first two days of competition.
Women’s Players Era schedule
- Wednesday, Nov. 26
- Texas 76, UCLA 65
- South Carolina 83, Duke 66
Thursday, Nov. 27
- Thursday, Nov. 27
- South Carolina vs. Texas, 8 p.m. | truTV
- UCLA vs. Duke, 10:30 p.m. | truTV
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