Jared Kushner and The Saudis Just Bought Madden

Jared Kushner and The Saudis Just Bought Madden

Wed, August 5, 2026 at 6:15 PM GMT+3 2 min read

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Madden NFL, the video game that allows you to escape reality by doing things like coaching the Jets to a Super Bowl, now belongs to Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and, in a small but well-compensated way, the President of the United States' son-in-law.

The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia closed its $55 billion purchase of Electronic Arts on Tuesday alongside Silver Lake and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners. Shareholders collected $210 a share in cash. EA's stock stopped trading and comes off the Nasdaq, ending a 36-year public run.

It's the largest leveraged buyout in history, a phrase worth sitting with, because the previous record holder was the 2007 buyout of Texas utility TXU, which ended in one of the biggest bankruptcies in American history.

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The financing is where this gets video game-level fun. PIF (which already owned roughly 9.9% of EA) borrowed $20 billion from JPMorgan, which also advised the consortium, so JPMorgan earned a fee for recommending the deal and now earns interest funding it. Kushner, who reportedly brokered the introduction between the Saudis and EA, runs a fund that PIF seeded with $2 billion in 2021 over the objections of PIF's own advisers. The money left Riyadh, hired a Kushner, and came home with EA Sports FC and Jedi Survivor.

EA's math is pretty grim. It generated about $7.5 billion in revenue last fiscal year and now carries $20 billion in acquisition debt. Expect more Madden, more Sims, more Ultimate Team card packs, and approximately zero interesting new ideas. Debt service does not fund experiments… and neither does being owned privately by a family of Gulf royals and the world's oldest 45-year-old man.

But, hey, maybe we'll have fun developments like hearing Jared's dulcet-toned voice tell us "EA Sports…If it's in the game, it's in the game" as we get ready to pretend the Jets are good.