Friday’s reports that Electronic Arts planned to go private were publicly confirmed Monday morning. Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners will join together to pay an estimated $55 billion for the video game mega-publisher in a deal being described as the “largest all-cash sponsor take-private investment in history.”
Gross - guess I won’t even wait for BF6 reviews to not buy the game.
I doubt it. The Saudi-Arabian monarchy doesn’t invest in things because they want to make money. They do it for power, image, and influence in the world. They just threw a lot of money into the E-sports world cup in Riyadh. I think they’re buying what’s needed to make Saudi-Arabia a gaming hub. They’re doing the same thing with sports and racing and all sorts of entertainment. For that reason, I doubt they’ll strip EA for parts. All of the competitive games that EA makes will suddenly have tons of prize money and developer-backing for competition and E-sports. And the final big event will always be in SA.
Yea fair there is definitely the sportswashing angle on this, but they are absolutely leveraging debt for this purchase which they will put on the company. Their deck also talks a ton about AI, which is where the AI/stripping angle comes from. As to whether they can just ignore the debt because oil money, that’s I suppose another question entirely.