The EA "LBO" (Ep. 25)

About this episode

Mitch and Blake discuss the $55 billion leveraged buy-out of Electronic Arts and its implications.

In this Special Edition of the GameCraft podcast, Mitch and Blake discuss the $55 billion leveraged buy-out of Electronic Arts by the Private Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Siliver Lake Partners, and Affinity Partners -- the largest LBO in US history, and the second largest transaction in the history of the video game business after Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision. They discuss the deal itself (and how to properly characterize it), some of its immediate implications, and why Mitch's take on the possibilities created by EA going private went from excitement to disappointment in the two weeks following the deal's announcement.

People in this episode

Hosts: Mitch Lasky, Blake Robbins

Topics covered

• leveraged buy-out
• Electronic Arts
• video game business
• investment
• Saudi Arabia
• business implications

Keywords

• EA
• LBO
• investment
• video games
• Saudi Arabia
• Activision
• Microsoft
• buy-out

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Electronic Arts, Private Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Siliver Lake Partners, Affinity Partners, Microsoft, Activision

More episodes of Gamecraft

• How Istanbul Won the Mobile Puzzle Wars (Ep. 29) · April 29, 2026 · 1h 6m
• The Attention Drain (Ep. 28) · April 22, 2026 · 1h 8m
• Roblox (Ep. 27) · April 15, 2026 · 1h 22m
• 2026 Trends & Specific Predictions (Ep. 26) · April 8, 2026 · 1h 10m
• The Sum of the Parts (Ep. 24) · May 21, 2025 · 1h 10m
• AI as a Platform (Ep. 23) · May 14, 2025 · 53 min