Tennessee Basketball To Compete In The 2025 Players Era Festival

Tennessee Basketball
Photo By Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

Tennessee basketball will play in the Players Era Festival the next three seasons in Las Vegas,a source confirmed to RTI. The Vols will play in the tournament the next three seasons

The one of its kind multi-team tournament made its debut in 2024 with eight teams competing in Las Vegas and the event paying out $9 million in NIL funds to the players on the competing teams.

The Players Era Festival is expanding in its second year. Tennessee will be the 18th team to join the event in 2025. It is unclear how the format of the tournament will work after nearly doubling in size.

This season, the eight teams split up into two pools a four. Each team played two teams in their pools and then faced off with the team that finished in the corresponding spot in the other pool.

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The pool play games took place on Tuesday and Wednesday of Feast Week (Thanksgiving week) with the final games taking place on the ensuing Sunday.

Oregon knocked off Alabama in the championship game of the event after each team won its two pool play games to make it to the championship game.

The format will likely look significantly different in its second season as the field dramatically expands. There are 17 teams besides Tennessee that are already officially in the tournament including Alabama, Auburn, Baylor, Creighton, Gonzaga, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Michigan, Notre Dame, Oregon, Rutgers, San Diego State, St. Joe’s. St. John’s, Syracuse and Texas A&M.

How the Players Festival will handle NIL payouts to each team is also uncertain. However, Tennessee will get multiple quality early season games for its resume and funds to boost its NIL effort for the 2025-26 season.

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