Foreign Policy Brief #219 | Reilly Fitzgerald | 10/9/2025
Policy Summary
The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) purchase of the video gaming company- Electronic Arts (EA)- comes with a $55 billion price tag. It is a joint-venture between the PIF and the private equity firm Silver Lake , and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners (another private equity firm). The purchase will take EA from a public company to a privately-owned company, which means that all of the stock in the company will be entirely owned by the PIF and Silver Lake, and cannot be purchased.
According to the BBC, $36 billion of the deal will be paid directly by the PIF and Silver Lake, and the remainder will be purchased with loans. The move is interesting on many levels, according to Axios, Saudi Arabia already had a 9.9% stake in EA prior to the purchase. Also, Jared Kushner is directly involved in the purchase involving Saudi Arabia at a time when he is in the Middle East (for the Gaza peace deal) as senior advisor to the President of the United States, his father-in-law, is quite intriguing if not worrying.
Analysis
Electronic Arts, known as EA, is one of the world’s most popular and prolific video gaming companies. Their games include EA FC (formerly known as the FIFA franchise of games), the Madden franchise, Battlefield, NBA, NHL, and many other wildly popular games! Video games is an industry with tremendous reach globally. Since 1993, 325 million copies have been sold around the world of EA FC, and FIFA as it was formerly known ; making it one of the most popular game series ever. In the United States, Madden is the most popular sports game which gets its name from NFL legend John Madden.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF, has been a soft power tool of the Saudi government. The PIF Fund has helped increase Saudi investment in various sectors and strengthen Saudi relationships with countries. PIF is a major owner and investor in football (or soccer) clubs around the world with the likes of Newcastle United in the UK.
Saudi’s investments in sports, in particular, has been labeled “sportswashing,” i.e. it has been a way for the Saudi Arabian government to increase its publicity and popularity while also maintaining a regime that violates human rights. Their move into new sectors and industries has also been a part of their Saudi Vision 2030 program which aims to diversify their entire economy away from traditional fossil fuels (which has propped their economies for decades) and transition into a post-oil world. Is the move to purchase EA a new moment of economic diversification, or is it more in the way of “sportswashing”? The answer isn’t totally clear.
Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in the video game industry for years. The Saudi PIF owns the Savvy Games Group, which in 2023 bought Scopely, a video game company that owns products like (the very popular) PokémonGO, MonopolyGO, and ScrabbleGO, among many other games. Scopely was bought by Savvy Games Group for $4.9 billion.
Saudi Arabia is also hosting the eSports World Cup, and the Olympic eSports Games in 2027 (an International Olympic Committee [IOC] event). The government is already involved with Nintendo and TakeTwo Interactive, which are both video game companies.
The Saudi Arabian PIF’s purchase of Electronic Arts (EA) comes with a $55 billion price tag, and is a joint-venture between the PIF and Silver Lake, which has direct ties to Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. The purchase will take EA from a public to a privately-owned company, which means that all of the stock in the company will be entirely owned by the PIF and Silver Lake, and cannot be purchased. According to the BBC, $36 billion of the deal will be paid directly by the PIF and Silver Lake, and the remainder will be purchased with loans.
The move is interesting on many levels, according to Axios, Saudi Arabia already had a 9.9% stake in EA prior to the purchase. Also, Jared Kushner being directly involved in the purchase involving Saudi Arabia at a time when he is in the Middle East (for the Gaza peace deal) as senior advisor to the President of the United States, his father-in-law, is quite intriguing if not worrying.
So, is it “sportswashing”, or “gamewashing”? It remains yet to be seen. However, it is clear that Saudi Arabia is interested in investing and purchasing brands around the world in various industries to increase their relations with foreign governments. It remains to be seen if this is a soft power tool, just a means to diversify their oil dependent economy into burgeoning industries.
Engagement Resources
- Saudi Vision 2030 – https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en
- Savvy Games Group (PIF) – https://www.pif.gov.sa/en/our-investments/our-portfolio/savvy-games-group/
- Olympic eSports Games (IOC) – https://www.olympics.com/ioc/olympic-esports-games