The European Commission approved the PIF-led take-private of Electronic Arts under its Foreign Subsidies Regulation, removing one of the last hurdles to the biggest leveraged buyout ever.
The European Union has cleared the $55bn takeover of Electronic Arts by a Saudi-led consortium, removing one of the last regulatory hurdles to the largest leveraged buyout in history.
The European Commission signed off under its foreign-subsidies rules on 31 July, days after approving the deal on competition grounds, running the kind of regulatory gauntlet that Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal faced a few years earlier.
The buyers are a powerful trio. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the private-equity firm Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, the fund led by Jared Kushner, agreed to take EA private in September 2025.
The structure is historic in scale. At $55bn it is the biggest take-private deal ever struck, funded by a mix of consortium equity and a vast pile of debt, with PIF set to hold about 93% of the company once it closes.
The subsidy review was the sensitive part. The EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation exists to stop state money from outside the bloc from distorting competition when a foreign-backed buyer acquires a business in Europe.
PIF is exactly the kind of buyer it targets. As a sovereign wealth fund worth around $1 trillion, its backing raised the question of whether state cash was tilting the field, which is why the clearance mattered.
The Commission decided it did not. It concluded the deal would not raise competition concerns and cleared it under both merger and subsidy rules, letting the transaction proceed across the bloc.
For EA, this is a profound change of ownership. The company behind The Sims, Battlefield, Apex Legends, and its long-running football franchise would pass from public markets into the hands of a sovereign fund and its partners.
It is also a bet on how EA makes money. The publisher has been aggressively expanding monetisation, recently building a full advertising platform inside its games aimed at more than 100 million players.
The strategic logic sits in Riyadh. The purchase is a centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s push to turn itself into a global gaming hub, part of a wider effort to diversify its economy away from oil.
PIF has been buying its way in for years. Through its Savvy Games arm it has taken stakes in studios and esports firms around the world, and EA would be its most valuable prize by far.
The politics are unavoidable. Kushner’s involvement, Saudi state money, and control of games played by hundreds of millions have drawn scrutiny from human-rights groups and lawmakers wary of the kingdom’s soft-power ambitions.
Europe is not the only gatekeeper. The deal still faces review elsewhere, most notably in the United States, where the Committee on Foreign Investment scrutinises foreign control of American companies.
That US review is the bigger unknown. Foreign ownership of a major American publisher, backed by a Gulf state and a president’s son-in-law, sits squarely in the territory CFIUS was built to examine.
Regulators everywhere are warier of big technology deals. Transatlantic friction over how Europe polices tech has grown, with US lawmakers pressing to open a trade probe into EU tech rules even as Brussels waves this one through.
The gaming industry has seen this before. Consolidation has swept the sector, from speculation over Microsoft’s next target to its Activision purchase, and EA’s sale is the latest sign that scale and deep pockets now set the terms.
Shareholders have already said yes. EA investors voted overwhelmingly in favour of the takeover, leaving regulators as the main obstacle, and Europe has now stepped aside.
What remains is the finish line. With the EU cleared, the consortium’s focus shifts to the outstanding approvals, and to the question of what a sovereign-owned EA will mean for the players who never got a vote.
