Saudi Arabia is not buying EA for video games. He is buying cultural influence in hundreds of millions of homes

An Arab sovereign background has just closed the greatest leverage purchase operation in history: 55,000 million dollars per electronic arts. Paying a 25% premium (in the normal fork), apparently without haggling (definitely abnormal). Closing the operation in record time. And nobody lifts an eyebrow. Because it is supposed to be “only video games.”

But they are not “only video games”:

• It is the FC 26 Entering every week in the living room of 150 million homes, especially for its younger members.
• Is THE SIMS Teaching what a family, a career, an aspirational life is.
• Is Madden Nfl and Battlefield occupying Sunday afternoons and the nights during the Week of Medio Planet.

Saudi Arabia has not bought a study but a more powerful cultural distribution channel than any television networkquieter than any advertising campaign, more effective than any Hollywood study.

Let’s think about the concrete:

• In EA Sports FC, every year it is decided which goals to include, what flags appear in the stadiums, what social messages are integrated into the game, what role is granted to women’s football, what attire the fans carry.
• In the PREMs, it is defined what kind of relationships are possible and which are not, what professional careers are glamorized and which ones lose value, what constitutes “success” in simulated life.
• In Battlefield, it is chosen what historical conflicts represent, how it is portrayed to the Middle East, what factions are “the good”.

These are not technical details. They are editorial decisions that mold the worldview of millions of players They spend hundreds of hours a year in these worlds.

And when a company stops quoting in the stock market, those decisions are no longer publicly justified:

• There are no shareholders asking why certain flags of certain markets were eliminated.
• Do not explain why references to alcohol, to the game, to sex or certain lifestyles disappear in subsequent updates.
• There are no analysts questioning why certain conflicts are represented in a certain way.
• There are no quarterly reports that explain narrative changes.

Only gradual, imperceptible adjustments, which normalize certain visions of the world.

The Saudi fund has not gone for studies indie experimental or for niche games with political messages. Has gone for the more franchises mainstreamsafe and massive on the planet. The least questionable possible. He Soft Power more invisible that exists: entertainment so normalized that nobody wonders who is behind. He simply plays.

And then there is the detail that goes unnoticed: they pay 25% premium on the closing price without blinking. They close in a few months when operations thus usually lengthened years.

• A traditional investment fund would have dribble each percentage point.
• I would have asked for more DUE Diligence.
• He would have negotiated to the last dollar.

The Saudi PIF pays the premium and accelerates the closure. Because When your goal is not to maximize the return of the invested but maximize strategic influence, speed matters more than the price. Close before someone realizes what you are really buying. Microsoft has been consolidating the purchase of Blizzard Activision for two years. This goes quickly.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son -in -law, is in this operation, according to the Financial Timesand not by chance. Its background, Affinity Partners, He received 2,000 million from the Saudi Pif after leaving the White House. Now returns the favor: its presence converts a foreign purchase into an operation “led by Americans”, which reduces the scrutiny of the Foreign Investment Committee (CFIUS). While he appears as a consortium architect, the White House will see partners and not threats.

It can be replicated that this is only economic diversification, petrodollars looking for return in entertainment. If so, why not buy Netflix, Disney or Spotify? Why specifically the sector where you can shake what millions of teenagers do for thousands of hours a year without appearing propaganda?

The amazing thing is not that this happens. Soccer has accustomed us to Saudi laundering. The hallucinating thing is that almost nobody questions it. The best way to exercise power and influence is that it simply seems fun. LOOT Boxes And seasonal passes while nobody wonders who decides what to normalize in those worlds.

And when you take out a stock market company (what will happen with EA), you eliminate the quarterly transparency obligation, you no longer have to account for western scrutiny shareholders and you can make subtle adjustments that no one will detect until it is too late. Nothing scandalous. Only small changes in narratives, representations, progression systems that, multiplied by 500 million players for years, move entire cultural needles.

That is the perfect conquest.

In Xataka | This game has been scheduled by only one person, and there is already talk of him as one of the great Shooters of the year

Outstanding image | Xataka