The $55 billion question: what Saudi Arabia's record EA buyout means for the games it makes

The biggest buyout ever

Electronic Arts is no longer a public company. A consortium of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the private equity firm Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners took EA private in a deal worth $55 billion, paying shareholders $210 a share in cash. Announced on 29 September 2025, it closed in early August 2026 and stands as the largest leveraged buyout in history, and the second largest acquisition the games business has seen after Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard.

The structure matters as much as the headline number. Roughly $36 billion came in as equity from the three partners, with about $20 billion of debt arranged by JPMorgan loaded onto the company. PIF ended up with about 93 percent of EA, Silver Lake with around 5.5 percent and Affinity with a little over one percent. EA shares were delisted from the Nasdaq.

It was not a quick close. The consortium announced the take-private on 29 September 2025, then spent months clearing competition regulators. The European Commission signed off on 23 July 2026, with the remaining approvals in place by the end of that month, and the deal completed in early August. For a company founded in 1982, it was the end of more than four decades on the public market.

Who is buying, and why

For PIF, EA is part of a long-running push to move the Saudi economy beyond oil and into entertainment and sport. The fund had held an EA stake for years before making its move. In the announcement, PIF deputy governor Turqi Alnowaiser said entertainment and sport are "key areas of strategic focus" for the fund and "among the fastest growing and evolving sectors around the world."

EA's leadership framed the sale as a moment of strength rather than surrender. Chairman and chief executive Andrew Wilson, who keeps his job under the new owners, said the company was entering its next chapter "from a position of strength." Silver Lake's Egon Durban called EA's franchises "some of the most beloved in entertainment," and Kushner said EA's games had "become part of everyday life for hundreds of millions of people." The headquarters stay in Redwood City, California.

The debt question

The number that should interest players is not $55 billion but $20 billion. That is the debt now sitting on EA, and servicing it costs money every year regardless of how any single game performs. Companies that emerge from large leveraged buyouts tend to face pressure to widen margins, and EA already leans heavily on recurring revenue from EA Sports FC, Madden and its mobile titles.

None of that guarantees worse games or heavier monetisation. But it changes the incentives. EA now answers to a small group of owners with a fixed return in mind and a large loan to repay, rather than to a public market that at least tracked player goodwill quarter by quarter. The next few years of EA Sports FC, Battlefield and The Sims will be the real test of whether a record buyout is good for the people who play the games, and not only for the people who financed it.