Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners just acquired EA Sports for $55 billion. EA shareholders get $210 per share in cash. The stock stops trading tomorrow.
This is the same Jared Kushner who couldn't get a security clearance without his father-in-law overruling the CIA. Now he controls Madden.
The Saudis gave Kushner's fund $2 billion in 2021 despite their own advisors saying he had no investment experience. That fund is now large enough to buy the company that makes virtual football. The same people who said giving him money was stupid are now presumably pretending this was the plan all time.
EA shareholders are thrilled because $210 per share is a 47% premium over Friday's close. They think they won. They sold their stake in a company that prints money every year from people buying the same game with updated rosters to a guy whose primary qualification was sleeping in the same house as Ivanka Trump.
Retail traders spent the weekend Googling whether they can still buy EA stock on Monday. They cannot. The deal is done. They will now spend three months analyzing what this means for Take-Two Interactive instead of accepting that they are perpetually 72 hours late to every trade that matters.
The press release says Affinity Partners sees "significant growth opportunities in interactive entertainment." That is corporate speak for we have $55 billion and bilateral relations to maintain.
Somewhere a 19-year-old with $740 in Robinhood just created a Discord server to discuss which gaming stock to pile into next. He will choose Ubisoft. Ubisoft is French and unprofitable. He will lose $340 by Thursday and blame Jerome Powell.
The Saudis now own the exclusive rights to every NFL player's digital likeness. Jared Kushner is their American intermediary. If you think technical analysis would have predicted this, you are exactly the kind of person who should wire me $5,000 for my Elliott Wave masterclass.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment