EA Sports Sold In A $55 Billion Deal Involving Saudi Public Investment Fund
MSN – EA Sports is under new ownership thanks to a watershed $55 billion deal involving Saudi Arabia.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia's growing influence in sports has become a topic of fierce debate, with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy most recently taking aim at Tom Brady for allegedly accepting $75 million to appear at a flag football tournament.
On Monday, the country further sunk its teeth into the sports world after Electronic Arts - the parent company of EA Sports - announced that it was sold to a group of investors headlined by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners and Silver Lake
As part of the agreement, EA Sports - which has stood as a publicly traded company since 1990 - will now be taken private, making it the "largest all-cash sponsor take-private investment in history," per an official press release. Stockholders are in line to receiver $210 per share in cash, marking a 25 percent premium on the company's share price of $168.32 at market close on Friday.
First they took our trade center. Then they took our golfer. Then they booked some comedians.
Some other investments between there. And now the Saudi's have purchased (and privatized) our most storied sports video game company.
Glaring moral dilemma aside, from a pure "getting better sports video games" perspective, could this possibly be a good thing? Maybe? Or does this literally change nothing? I have no idea. I'm pretty damn easy to please when it comes to sports video games. But when I get online and read random internet people's opinions of the latest EA Sports games (i.e. the College Football 26 Reddit page), I see a whole bunch of, "This is LAUGHABLY UNPLAYABLE. EA Sports should be ASHAMED. Everything about this game sucks BALLS. If you're having fun playing this game you should KILL YOURSELF."
In the defense of those people, I can kinda see what they're talking about with some things. I have plenty enough fun playing the new college football games, but there are always some little things that seem as if they would be so incredibly easy to fix, but for whatever reason (despite them rolling out a new game update every fucking week), EA Sports refuses to do it. I feel like most true sports video gamers of the world would tell you EA Sports games have gone downhill in quality lately. I know Madden is virtually unrecognizable nowadays. There was just something about those early 2000's games, before things got so hyperrealistic, that today's games don't have.
So maybe EA Sports going private with a watershed $55B USD (or 206,272,550,000 Saudi Riyals) deal with the folks who brought to us 9/11 (and Jared Kushner) is the type of shakeup that company needs. Maybe the Saudi Arabians will dumb things down a bit and make video games feel like video games again. At minimum, can we get Mohammed bin Salman to at least get Road to Glory back to its NCAA 14 glory days. Not to say that would totally make up for their past transgressions. But it's a start!