Report: Saudi Arabia’s PIF mulls EA and Savvy merger

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund may merge Savvy Games Group and EA, according to a report.

Bloomberg cited people “familiar with the matter” who claimed that while no final decision had been made, such a move would help better coordinate both companies’ assets.

The news comes shortly after Savvy Games Group CEO Brian Ward announced he was stepping down from the company. He was replaced in the role by interim boss Turqi Alnowaiser, a senior PIF executive that played a role in that EA deal.

M&A spree

Under Ward, Savvy Games Group has bought a number of games companies under its roof through M&A. It acquired Monopoly Go developer Scopely in 2023 for $4.9 billion.

That company itself has since acquired Niantic’s games teams behind titles like Pokémon Go for $3.5 billion and Turkish studio Loom Games, developer of Pixel Flow, in a deal valuing the company in excess of $1 billion.

Other Savvy deals include esports organisations ESL and FaceIt, combined into the ESL FaceIt Group, and the impending $6bn acquisition of Mobile Legends maker Moonton. Any move to merge Savvy and EA is unlikely to occur until after that acquisition is finalised, the sources said.

Savvy has also accrued $12 billion worth of gaming-related shares as of earlier this year in companies such as Nintendo and Bandai Namco. These were transferred over from PIF.

The PIF’s $55bn buyout of EA included partners Silver Lake and Affinity Partners - the latter of which PIF is a significant backer of.

A merger of EA and Savvy would bring together one of the world's largest console and PC games publishers with one of the most successful mobile games companies in Scopely. It's not clear how such a deal would impact Silver Lake and Affinity Partners.

PocketGamer.biz discussed the possibility of a merger on the recent Week in Mobile Games podcast. We’ve also analysed exactly how Savvy built up its empire and what a post Brian Ward-era might look like here.

Learn more about the games industry across the Middle East at Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan on November 7th and 8th.