Saudi Arabia Is Loading EA With $20B in Debt

Introduction

Electronic Arts pays about $53 million a year in interest. Once the $55 billion buyout led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund closes, that figure is projected to land between $1.5 and $2 billion a year. That's a 30- to 40-fold jump, on debt Bloomberg expects to be rated junk, at a company whose games an estimated 700 million people play. The firm taking a stake in that math is Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, which has already collected more than $110 million in fees from the same Saudi government now about to become EA's majority owner.

If you spend money in Madden, EA Sports FC, The Sims, Apex Legends, or Battlefield, you're one of the people who ends up covering that jump, through pricier bundles, more aggressive battle passes, and thinner support on games you already bought. None of this existed as a problem a year ago, and EA didn't need rescuing. It's being loaded with debt anyway, so a Saudi fund can own it outright and Kushner's firm can collect on both sides of the same money.

EA Wasn't Broke

Look at what EA's books actually said going into this. For the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2026, the company reported $8 billion in net bookings, up 9% from the year before, and $2.55 billion in cash from operations, a record. Its total debt was $1.5 billion, two sets of senior notes at 1.85% and 2.95%, with nothing drawn on its revolving credit line. Full-year interest expense came to $53 million, down from $58 million. It was sitting on roughly $3 billion in cash.

The buyout leaves all of that intact and stacks something new on top. On September 28, 2025, EA agreed to go private for $55 billion, or $210 a share, bought by a consortium of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the private-equity firm Silver Lake, and Kushner's Affinity Partners. The purchase runs on about $36.4 billion in equity from the three buyers plus $20 billion in newly issued debt, committed by JPMorgan, with roughly $18 billion of it funded at close. That $20 billion lands on EA's books, not the buyers'.

Shareholders approved the deal in December, with about 99% of the votes cast in favor. The U.S. antitrust waiting period expired in February. Reuters reported in July that the European Commission is expected to clear the deal this week, with a separate EU ruling on foreign subsidies due July 30. When it all closes, PIF ends up owning roughly 93% of the company.

Paid on Both Ends of the Same Money

Here's what ties the two names in that consortium together. Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and a former senior White House adviser, started Affinity Partners in 2021, months after leaving government. In 2022 the fund landed a $2 billion investment from PIF. The New York Times reported that PIF's own screening panel had objected first, citing the "inexperience" of Affinity's management and the risk the kingdom would carry most of the downside. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman overruled them.

The money has run one direction ever since. A joint congressional letter from March 2026 lays out the trail: Affinity took in roughly $157 million in fees from foreign clients between 2021 and 2024, about $87 million of it directly from the Saudi government, then an estimated $39 million more from the Saudis in 2025. The letter's bottom line is that Kushner "has collected more than $110 million from the government of Saudi Arabia for investment management services that have reaped little to no return." Ninety-nine percent of Affinity's money under management comes from foreign sources, most of it Gulf sovereign funds.

Put those two facts side by side. PIF pays Affinity to manage its money, and now PIF and Affinity are co-buyers in the same $55 billion deal, PIF rolling in the EA shares it already held and ending up the majority owner, Affinity taking a slice of the equity. That slice is about 5%, according to the Financial Times, the smallest of the three buyers and the only one you won't find itemized in a filing. EA's proxy discloses the whole $36.4 billion in equity as one figure the three buyers "severally committed," with no breakdown.

A 30-to-40x Jump in the Interest Bill

Twenty billion dollars of debt at a junk rating is expensive money. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported the new borrowing is expected to be rated single-B, speculative grade, the kind of rating that carries steep interest rates (coverage via PC Gamer). Run a market rate for single-B debt against $20 billion and you land in the $1.5-to-$2-billion annual range analysts have floated. What gets me is the comparison to EA's actual earnings: operating income last year was $1.16 billion, itself down 24%. The projected interest bill alone runs higher than the company's entire operating profit.

That money has to come from somewhere, and it doesn't come from the people who own the place. Michael Futter, a games-industry finance analyst, told CNBC: "I don't know how EA is going to service this debt without significant layoffs, studio closures, and possibly IP sell-off." In the same article he named the revenue tactics a debt load pushes a publisher toward: microtransactions, battle passes, and rotating limited-time inventory built to trigger fear of missing out. Those are the exact mechanics inside the games EA's players already play.

The layoffs have already started, before the deal has even closed. EA ran three separate rounds of cuts in 2026: its Battlefield studios in March (GamesIndustry.biz), then recruitment, customer support, trust-and-safety, and IT teams across two rounds in June (Checkpoint Gaming), even as Battlefield 6 was reportedly the best-selling shooter of the year. EA hasn't confirmed the numbers, and hasn't linked the cuts to the debt; in October 2025 it told staff there would be no "immediate changes" from the deal. The people connecting the layoffs to the $20 billion are the analysts, not the company.

Who Benefits

Follow the money out and it lands in a few places. PIF gets outright control of a company with one of the largest captive audiences in entertainment, and by EA's own count cited in the Senate oversight letter, more than 13 billion hours played in 2024. It's paying a premium to get there, more than $10 billion above where EA was trading before the deal, which tells you the fund wants the asset for reasons beyond a quick financial return.

Affinity gets both the fees and the equity. It keeps managing PIF's money on one side and holds a stake in the acquisition on the other, a roughly 5% position in a deal it never had to price out loud. For Kushner, whose firm draws 99% of its capital from foreign governments, staying close to PIF is the business.

The banks get paid no matter how the games turn out. JPMorgan committed the full $20 billion in debt financing, which comes with underwriting fees and years of interest. Goldman Sachs, which advised EA on the sale, stood to collect around $110 million on the deal. The same proxy discloses Goldman had already earned about $24.3 million in fees from PIF and $154.7 million from Silver Lake, meaning two of the three buyers were paying Goldman clients before this deal ever existed.

The people who don't benefit are the ones supplying the cash. EA's roughly 14,600 employees absorb the cost-cutting, and its players absorb the monetization. Neither group had a vote that mattered. The shareholders who did approved the deal overwhelmingly, because they got $210 a share and walked away clean.

The Cash Flow Was the Target

EA was doing fine, and that's what makes this deal different. In the standard private-equity story, debt is a bet that new owners can fix a broken business. Here the buyers are borrowing $20 billion against a company that already worked, and EA has to repay that loan out of the same cash flow that made it worth buying in the first place.

There's a clean example of where this road can end. In 2005, three investment firms took Toys "R" Us private and, per a Senate Joint Economic Committee report, loaded it with $5.3 billion in acquisition debt. The American Prospect calculated the retailer then owed $450 to $500 million a year in interest alone. It couldn't outrun the payments, filed for bankruptcy in 2017, and 31,000 people lost their jobs. The difference is that Toys "R" Us was already weak when it was bought, and EA is thriving, which is exactly why lenders were willing to put $20 billion against it, and why that debt now sits ahead of everyone else with a claim on the company.

You'll hear the optimistic read, and CNBC printed it: going private frees EA from quarterly-earnings pressure to make bigger creative bets. Maybe. But a company carrying $20 billion in junk-rated debt answers to its lenders at least as harshly as a public company answers to Wall Street, and lenders don't care about creative bets, only about getting paid. Going private moves that pressure from Wall Street to its creditors, and makes it a great deal bigger.

The Bottom Line

The debt gets paid. Lenders committed $20 billion against EA's cash flow precisely because they expect to be paid back, and the deal carries no financing condition, so the structure is locked in regardless of what the market does between now and closing. The unsettled part is who actually supplies that cash flow.

On the current math, it's the roughly 700 million people logging into Madden, EA Sports FC, and Apex Legends, a price bump here and a battle pass there, covering interest on a loan that exists so a Saudi fund could own the studio and Kushner's firm could take a cut of a deal it was already being paid to be near. The EU is expected to sign off within days, and U.S. national-security review is the last real gate, with a deadline to close that runs to late September. After that, the one check left on any of it is whether all those players keep spending like nothing changed.