Saudi Arabia weighs merging EA with Savvy into one gaming giant

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is weighing a merger of Electronic Arts with Savvy Games, which would put Madden NFL and Pokemon Go under one roof. Brussels cleared the EA takeover on competition and foreign subsidy grounds six weeks ago, and combining two companies the same owner already controls may not require a European filing at all.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is weighing a merger of Electronic Arts with Savvy Games, Bloomberg reported, putting Madden NFL and Pokemon Go under one roof. Nothing has been decided, and nothing is expected before Savvy closes its $6B purchase of Moonton from ByteDance.

Bloomberg notes any deal would face regulatory hurdles, and reaches for Microsoft’s $69B purchase of Activision Blizzard as the precedent.

In Europe that comparison may not hold. The Commission cleared the EA takeover on competition grounds and then again under the foreign subsidies rules on 31 July.

That was six weeks ago.

The distinction is control. EU merger rules catch transactions that change who controls a company, and shifting assets between entities that already answer to the same owner is an internal reorganisation rather than a concentration.

The fund holds about 93% of EA. It owns Savvy outright.

The buyout closed on 5 August at $55B, funded with $36B of PIF equity and roughly $20B of new debt from JPMorgan.

Whether the remaining sliver matters is the open question. Silver Lake and Affinity Partners hold the rest, and minority rights over budgets or strategy can add up to joint control in Brussels.

If they do, a merger changes who controls EA and the Commission looks again. If they do not, there may be nothing to file.

Savvy is the larger build by allocation. The PIF gave it $38B, which bought Scopely for $4.9B and Niantic’s games business for about $3.5B. The industry it is buying into is worth about $214B.

EA’s own record explains why the conversation is happening. It cancelled the mobile titles it acquired through Glu Mobile, a $2.1B deal in 2021, and its strength stayed in console and PC. Mobile is where the growth is.

The reorganisation follows a management change. Savvy’s chief executive Brian Ward left this month, replaced on an interim basis by Turqi Alnowaiser, a PIF deputy governor who fronted the EA negotiations.

The fund is also spending more carefully than it was. It has pulled back from riskier bets in favour of returns, and Saudi banks cannot fund the kingdom’s own data centre pipeline without outside help.