The United States Senate has approved legislation that would reshape the financial and regulatory structure of college sports, although significant political and legal questions remain before it can become law.

The Protect College Sports Act passed on Monday by a bipartisan vote of 77–22. Written by senators Maria Cantwell and Ted Cruz, the bill would introduce national rules covering athlete compensation, name, image and likeness agreements, transfers and eligibility. It would also grant the NCAA and conferences limited protection from antitrust challenges when enforcing those rules.

The legislation must still pass the House of Representatives, which is not scheduled to return to legislative business until November. If the House does not approve it before the congressional session ends, the process would have to begin again in the next Congress.

At the centre of the bill is an attempt to place the revenue-sharing system created by the 2025 House settlement on a statutory footing. Schools are presently permitted to share as much as $21.5m in annual revenue directly with their athletes. The Senate bill would retain that mechanism while allowing some schools to add as much as $27.5m through a separate fund intended to encourage athletes to remain with their current programmes. Cantwell argued that the legislation would establish a federal right to NIL income while formally recognising athletes’ entitlement to a share of the money generated through media rights, ticket sales and sponsorship.

“This is saying, for the first time, that an athlete gets a percentage of the media rights, the ticket sales and the sponsorship,” she told the Senate.

The bill would also cap agent fees at five per cent, guarantee scholarships for up to 10 years after an athlete’s eligibility expires and require schools to cover specified medical costs for five years after a playing career ends. Scholarships could not be withdrawn because of injury or poor performance.

Those protections are accompanied by greater restrictions on athlete movement. Players would ordinarily be permitted one transfer during a five-year eligibility window without being required to sit out a season, subject to limited exceptions. The bill would also seek to prevent coaches from leaving during the season and require universities changing conferences to spend three years as independents. Conferences would be limited to 20 members in an attempt to slow further consolidation and prevent the largest programmes forming a breakaway competition.

Supporters portray those measures as a way of introducing stability after years of litigation, conflicting state laws and rapidly increasing expenditure. College football roster costs can now exceed $40m annually, while the transfer portal has made retaining players a year-round operation. The bill’s opponents, however, contend that stability is being purchased by limiting athletes’ rights while protecting the institutions that have profited from their labour.

The bill does not classify college athletes as employees or provide an immediate route to collective bargaining. Instead, it proposes further study of the employment question while granting the NCAA greater authority to regulate compensation and player movement. That approach, in particular, has drawn opposition from labour organisations, athlete advocates, the NAACP and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Critics have also questioned why controls are required for athlete compensation and transfers without comparable limits on coaching salaries or wider athletic department expenditure.

The NCAA and the major conferences have spent years seeking federal protection from lawsuits and a single national framework to replace different state NIL rules. Passage in the Senate represents their most substantial legislative success to date. It cannot yet be seen as a settled settlement for college sports, however, as the House has repeatedly struggled to unite around previous proposals, while the remaining legislative window is narrow.