Battlefield, The Sims and FC All Get New Owners Next Week

Electronic Arts has obtained every regulatory approval required to complete its sale. The deal closes on or around August 4, and the company that has been publicly traded for decades will become private next week, with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund holding over 93% of it.

The $55 billion all-cash deal was first announced in September 2025. It's the largest leveraged buyout in corporate history, surpassing the $45 billion TXU energy deal from 2007. EA shareholders are receiving $210 per share – a 25% premium on the company's share price at the time the deal was signed. The consortium acquiring EA consists of PIF, private equity firm Silver Lake at roughly 5%, and Affinity Partners somewhere between 1% and 5%.

Affinity Partners was founded by Jared Kushner in 2021, shortly after leaving his role as senior advisor to Donald Trump. PIF invested $2 billion into Affinity following its launch.

What EA Looks Like Under New Ownership

Andrew Wilson remains as CEO. EA stays headquartered in Redwood City, California. The studios will maintain creative control, according to EA. What any of that looks like in practice, under an ownership structure where a single sovereign wealth fund controls nine-tenths of the company, is a question that SEC filings can't really answer.

The deal comes with $20 billion in new debt, which is a significant structural burden for a company that has already been through multiple rounds of layoffs this year – cuts across Battlefield, cuts in what EA describes as "non-development roles," and BioWare staff separately expressing concern about what the acquisition means for a studio that hasn't had a commercially successful project in years. The incentive to reduce costs doesn't diminish once the deal closes. It tends to go the other direction.

EA's CEO also received a substantial pay increase this year whilst those layoffs were happening. Employees noted this in an open letter. All of these details don’t make for a particularly clean picture heading into private ownership.

The Sims Question

The Sims is the franchise that keeps coming up, and for an obvious reason. It sits within a portfolio now majority-owned by a government with a well-documented record on the lack of LGBTQ+ rights, and it is a franchise with a player base that has historically pushed strongly and successfully for inclusive representation. The Sims team issued a statement saying their values are unchanged, and they may well mean it sincerely.

What nobody outside the deal can tell you is how that actually plays out over time. The gap between what The Sims represents to its community and what the majority owner's government represents on those same values is real, and a statement issued before the ink is dry doesn't resolve it. The next few years will ultimately say more than anything published this week.

From August 4th

Battlefield, EA Sports FC, The Sims, Apex Legends, Need for Speed – all of them are moving into private hands next Tuesday. The deal slipped its original June closing date by roughly two months due to the regulatory process, with the EU approving it under normal merger review and separately clearing it under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, which scrutinizes financial support from non-EU governments for its effect on EU market competition.

It is also worth noting what this means for the broader industry conversation around sovereign wealth fund involvement in gaming. The PIF already has stakes in Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, Take-Two, Nexon, and Capcom, amongst others. Those were minority positions taken through public markets. This is different – full ownership of a major publisher, with operational control and a seat at the table that a 5% stake doesn't provide. Whether that changes anything about how EA operates day to day is unknown. Whether it changes the conversation about where gaming's money comes from and who ultimately calls the shots is less of an open question.

The largest leveraged buyout in history, with $20 billion in debt attached to it, and a publisher that has spent the past year cutting people whilst its CEO's pay went up. August 4 is when that new reality officially begins.