College athletics entered a new commercial era on 1 July after the NCAA and its top conferences implemented the House v. NCAA antitrust settlement, ending a half-century ban on direct pay for student-athletes. The deal, approved in June by Judge Claudia Wilken, obliges the association to distribute nearly $2.8 billion in back damages over the next decade and permits schools across Division I to share revenue with players. Under the framework, each programme may allocate up to $20.5 million to its athletes in the 2025-26 academic year—about 22 percent of the average Power 4 school’s athletics income—with the limit indexed to rise annually. Power-conference officials are locking in compliance measures; the Big 12 and SEC have already required members to sign agreements pledging not to challenge the settlement, while the Big 12 and Big Ten have enlisted PayPal’s Venmo platform to handle hundreds of individual payments. The PayPal arrangement is worth roughly $100 million to the Big 12 over five years. Regulation of name-image-likeness (NIL) endorsements has shifted to the newly created College Sports Commission, an independent body that also polices the revenue cap. In a memo to Division I athletics directors on 10 July, the CSC said most collective-funded agreements reviewed to date do not satisfy its “valid business purpose” test; about 80 deals were rejected and may be resubmitted once. The guidance signals that booster collectives will need to transform into bona-fide marketing agencies if they wish to keep paying athletes. Attorneys and administrators caution that fresh legal battles are likely. Gender-equity advocates are scrutinising how schools divide the new compensation pools under Title IX, while antitrust lawyers are eyeing the NIL clearing-house rules and the salary-style cap. For now, however, the settlement has replaced decades of informal workarounds with the first codified pay-for-play system in U.S. college sports.