Sports

Rivals recruiting service now charging hundreds for ranking evaluations

Nairavoice · Sep 24, 2026 · 4 min read

The college sports recruiting network Rivals is now charging hundreds of dollars for high school players to be evaluated and potentially placed in its in-house ranking system.

For $499 – though currently discounted at 20% for $399.99 – a high schooler hoping to take their talents to the next level can get scouting reports, film evaluation and a positional breakdown “from the same scouts who evaluate and rank the nation’s top prospects.”

The argument for this service, according to a statement from Rivals and On3 CEO Shannon Terry, is that this would help players who aren’t among the best of the best get the attention they deserve from scouts.

“1.04M kids played HS football last season,” he wrote on X. “About 6,600 held a Rivals star rating… roughly 0.6%. That’s not a talent gap. It’s a capacity gap. Our scouts have always focused on FBS prospects, and FCS, D-II, NAIA and D-III kids rarely get their film watched. Rivals Recruits puts the same scouts, held to the same standards, on more of that film.”

1.04M kids played HS football last season. About 6,600 held a Rivals star rating… roughly 0.6%.

That’s not a talent gap. It’s a capacity gap. Our scouts have always focused on FBS prospects, and FCS, D-II, NAIA and D-III kids rarely get their film watched.

Rivals Recruits puts… https://t.co/DWZnrgISOU

– Shannon Terry (@ShannonTerry) September 24, 2026

If there’s anyone who understands the business of the college recruiting landscape, it’s Terry, who’s basically the progenitor of the modern form of the industry. He founded Rivals at the turn of the century and then left to create 247Sports after Yahoo purchased his first site. When CBS Sports then purchased 247Sports, he left to create On3, which acquired Rivals last year.

And now the business is the recruits themselves, both as consumers and as advertisers. Hayes Fawcett, a national recruiting and transfer portal reporter for Rivals, posted a thread of players singing the praises of the service and all of the benefits they get from it. The thread certainly showcases the boost in exposure these players are getting, but it raises the question of how many extra players these reporters and scouts can cover. After all, if the issue is “capacity,” as Terry says, but now the same number of scouts have to cover a new batch of paying prospects, what does that mean for talented, non-paying prospects? With the number of hours in a workday unchanging alongside the increased workload of prospects, will those on the bubble of elite talent, and not paying Rivals, get lost in the shuffle?

At the same time, this decision certainly seems to be in lockstep with the skyrocketing costs of youth sports across the country; it’s yet another thing parents may feel the pressure to spend money on so that their kids have the best athletic opportunities. The theoretical goal of helping all underrepresented prospects ends up being capped at the ones whose families can afford this. The egalitarian messaging might also raise a few eyebrows among observers who know about the ongoing arms race among recruiting publications. 247Sports announced in March that it was moving on from creating composite rankings of all recruiting services to calculate team recruiting rankings, and instead solely use its internal system starting with the class of 2027.

Purchasing this service does not guarantee any opportunities beyond the evaluation.

“Ratings, rankings and stars are earned, never bought,” the Rivals Recruits FAQ reads. “An athlete can purchase access to the Rivals Recruits evaluation process, but payment does not guarantee a rating, ranking, star designation or any specific evaluation outcome.”

Underneath that response is a block quote that reads, “Opportunity can be expanded. Standards cannot.”

But just how far those opportunities will expand with the current price tag remains to be seen.

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