Video game company Electronic Arts, the maker of the "The Sims" and "Madden NFL," is being acquired in a $55 billion deal by a consortium of companies that led by President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

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Electronic Arts (EA), the publisher behind major video game franchises such as Madden and The Sims, has been acquired in a $55 billion deal. The acquisition, led by Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, private equity firm Silverlake, and Affinity Partners, is the largest private equity buyout on record. As a result, EA will transition from a publicly traded company to a private entity.

Industry experts suggest that going private could allow EA to focus on long-term creative strategies without the pressures of quarterly earnings. The Saudi investment is part of a broader effort to diversify the country's economy beyond oil, with significant investments in gaming and entertainment. The consortium aims to leverage EA's portfolio for growth in emerging gaming markets and technologies.

Electronic Arts acquired in $55 billion deal

All right, let's switch gears to this massive shakeup in the video game industry. EA, the maker of video games like Madden and The Sims, has been acquired in a $55 billion deal. It is the largest private equity buyout in history. It means the publicly traded company now goes private. Now, at the helm of the buyout is Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, also private equity firm Silverlake, and investment firm Affinity Partners, which, by the way, is founded by Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law. Joining us now is Nick Earle. He is the former CEO of Glue Mobile, a company that EA actually purchased back in 2021. All right, thank you so much for being with us. My pleasure. Talk to us about this EA buyout. How does transitioning to be a private company help the company's future? In a lot of ways. Having run a public company before in the gaming space, I can tell you there's just tremendous pressure from a quarterly perspective. Being freed up to be more creative, to think long term, to think of 10 years down the road as opposed to quarterly or that fiscal year, just allows the company to make better creative decisions, gets to manage their portfolio in a more thoughtful way. Being private just takes a lot of pressure off the company. EA has been really criticized for lacking innovation, lacking creativity. This is going to help them take bigger risks, you think? I think so. I think they'll be able to take bigger risks in their traditional forms of distributing their games, as well as in the new open areas that are coming to hold, like connected TV, connected devices in general, the mobile space, the freemium business model, all of which are really fueling the growth of the industry right now. This is just a great jumping off point for Electronic Arts, one of the behemoths in the industry, going private and now having the ability to really pursue this growth strategy as a private company with this consortium behind them. What role does this Saudi private equity fund play here? Why spend that kind of money on gaming? They have clearly been looking to diversify out of the oil economy and looking at tourism, infrastructure, entertainment, the live golf, as we've seen. And they've taken a couple of big stakes into video games. They bought Scopely a couple of years ago, very, very successful mobile company, Niantic, a well-known company in the space. And they have investments in Nintendo and others, Take-Two. So they're really looking to bring this industry to Saudi Arabia and really take it to the next level there, as well as invest deeply into these new connected devices and being able to find content to kind of fuel that distribution. Yeah, it's fascinating to watch because Saudi Arabia looking to really dominate the gaming industry, which is now worth more than cinema, streaming, or even the music industry. Prince Mohammed, by the way, has said that he wants to build a company a lot like Disney, but with games and with sports. Is this really, though, part of a bigger picture of the Saudis wanting to play on the world stage when it comes to sports and live entertainment, like with the Riyadh Comedy Festival? But they're continuing to meet resistance based on, frankly, their government, their way they treat LGBTQ community, the way they treat women. Are they ever going to be able to play on the world stage because of that divide? Yeah, listen, hard to say. They're not without conflict and contention here as an investing group. However, they do bring a lot to the table, and it feels like they really care about this space with this group of companies that they put together, the synergies that they can create across that and into their pipeline of games. This feels like this is a big win for gamers. I think it's a big win for Electronic Arts. And as PIF and the consortium are thinking long term, I think it's a big win for them. I think they can do a lot with it. The sort of the conflicts that you talked about and the issues, we'll have to see how that plays out. I think that's impossible to predict. All right. Nick Earl, thank you so much.

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