Electronic Arts Inc.

Electronic Arts Inc. is an American digital interactive entertainment company that develops, publishes, and operates video games and live services across consoles, PCs, and mobile devices, generating $7.53 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. The company is in the final stages of being taken private by a consortium of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners in a transaction valued at approximately $55 billion — the largest leveraged buyout in history.

This is a story about a collection of durable sports and shooter franchises whose economics have been excellent but whose public-market life is almost certainly over. The merger, announced in September 2025 at $210 per share, is expected to close by mid-2026 pending remaining regulatory approvals. For a public-market investor today, the question is not whether EA is a good business — it plainly is — but whether there is anything left to do except collect the spread. The file turns on what the business looks like on the other side of the transaction, and what kind of entity emerges from the largest experiment in taking a video-game publisher private.

Beyond the merger mechanics, the analytical question is whether EA's franchise engine — EA SPORTS FC, Madden NFL, College Football, Apex Legends, The Sims, and now Battlefield 6 — can sustain its economics under a leveraged capital structure. The answer depends heavily on the durability of Ultimate Team, the card-collection mode that generates a material portion of company-wide profits, and on whether Battlefield 6 becomes the persistent platform the company has spent four years and four studios building.