€ 47 billion: PIF, Silverlake and Affinity Partners acquire Electronic Arts

The big surprise: Elec­tro­nic Arts (EA), one of the largest publishers in the video games indus­try, is taken over by a consor­tium of inves­tors in a 55 billion dollar deal (not yet confirmed) and delis­ted from the stock exchange.

The lever­a­ged buyout is the second-largest gaming deal in history to date. It is only surpas­sed by Micro­sof­t’s Acti­­vi­­sion-Bliz­­zard take­over. EA is being acqui­red by the Saudi Arabian sove­reign wealth fund Public Invest­ment Fund (PIF, 9.9 percent), the US capi­tal company Silver Lake (Cali­for­nia) and the invest­ment firm Affi­nity Part­ners (the invest­ment firm of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner). 

All exis­ting share­hol­ders will receive 210 US dollars per share, after which EA will be delis­ted and taken private.

Due to the nature of the take­over (a so-called “lever­a­ged buyout”), EA is ther­e­fore ente­ring into the new owner­ship struc­ture with new debt of around 20 billion dollars.

The tran­sac­tion is the largest all-cash private equity invest­ment in history. The consor­tium is working closely with EA to enable the company to move faster and deve­lop new oppor­tu­ni­ties on a global scale. Accor­ding to indus­try experts, this means layoffs, more intru­sive mone­tiza­tion and massive savings, which will proba­bly also be felt by users. 

What does the mega-deal mean for the gaming world?

EA was foun­ded in 1982 and has estab­lished itself as one of the key play­ers in the gaming sector with titles such as the life simu­la­tion “The Sims”, “EA Sports FC” (form­erly “FIFA”) and the mili­tary simu­la­tion “Batt­le­field”. The company has a broad port­fo­lio, strong brands and seve­ral leading deve­lo­per studios such as DICE and Respawn. 

Howe­ver, EA has recently come under pres­sure: rising deve­lo­p­ment costs, growing marke­ting expen­dit­ure and ever-incre­a­sing expec­ta­ti­ons of tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence have made it diffi­cult to remain profi­ta­ble. At the same time, free-to-play games and large plat­form opera­tors such as Sony and Micro­soft are pushing into the market. 

The figu­res also shrank after the coro­na­vi­rus boom: In the first quar­ter of 2025, reve­nue slum­ped by 13.7%, net profit by as much as 30% and the important net bookings recently fell by 6%.