Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, Affinity Partners (Silver Lake) takes Electronic Arts private

At $55B enterprise value and 7.3x revenue, the consortium paid a 25% premium to EA's unaffected share price of ~$168, and the $210-per-share cash price cleared EA's own all-time pre-deal high of $179. This is the largest LBO ever completed — Silver Lake's prior media flagship, Endeavor, closed at a ~$25B consolidated enterprise value, making EA more than twice the size of that bet and a clear escalation in Silver Lake's willingness to write a mega-check in entertainment. PIF ended up with 93.4% of the company, having rolled its existing 9.9% stake rather than cashing out, which means the effective driver here is PIF's sovereign mandate, not Silver Lake's carry thesis: the acquisition was part of PIF's explicit strategy to diversify Saudi Arabia's economy away from oil by expanding into global entertainment and gaming, and PIF entered the deal trailing East Asian competitors in mobile gaming reach, with EA's franchises specifically intended to help bridge that gap. At $55B, this is also the second-largest gaming M&A deal ever, behind only Microsoft/Activision Blizzard — and with two of the three largest publicly traded Western publishers now private, any remaining scaled gaming IP on public markets should expect a re-rating in takeout premium expectations.

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