EA Is Now Saudi-Owned. What That Means For Racing Games

Electronic Arts officially went private on 4 August 2026, completing the $55 billion takeover first announced in September 2025. The company is now controlled by an investor consortium made up of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, bringing one of the world’s largest game publishers into a very different ownership structure.

For racing fans, the timing is particularly interesting because EA remains responsible for the official Formula 1 game franchise while its former WRC programme has already reached the end of the road. At the same time, the Saudi-backed Esports World Cup has removed traditional sim racing from its 2026 lineup and replaced its previous racing presence with Trackmania.

On Tuesday 4 August 2026, Electronic Arts ceased to be a publicly traded company after the acquisition formally closed. The consortium completed the $55 billion all-cash transaction, with EA shareholders receiving $210 per share and the company’s stock ceasing to trade on Nasdaq. EA remains headquartered in Redwood City, California, and Andrew Wilson continues as CEO under the new ownership structure. EA confirmed the completion of the transaction in its official announcement.

There is an important distinction here: the acquisition itself is not new. EA first announced the agreement with PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners on 29 September 2025, and shareholders approved the transaction on 22 December 2025. What changed on 4 August 2026 is that the deal actually closed, EA became privately held and the consortium formally took control of the company.

That distinction matters because this is not an article claiming that a previously unknown takeover suddenly appeared this week. The new development is that the proposed ownership structure has become the actual ownership structure, which means questions about strategy, investment and cost management are no longer hypothetical questions about a pending transaction. For racing players, that makes it worth taking another look at what EA really owns in the sector and, just as importantly, what it no longer controls.

What EA actually has in racing right now

EA still has several major racing brands associated with its portfolio, but treating Formula 1, WRC and Need for Speed as three equivalent active franchises would be misleading. Their situations in August 2026 are very different, and those differences matter when discussing what the new owners could actually influence. Formula 1 remains an active EA and Codemasters programme, WRC is effectively at the end of EA’s development involvement, and Need for Speed currently has no newly announced mainline successor to Unbound.

• • EA SPORTS F1. EA and Codemasters remain responsible for the official Formula 1 game series, but there is no standalone F1 26 release this year. Instead, EA launched the F1 25: 2026 Season Pack on 3 June 2026, adding the current teams, drivers, cars, sporting regulations, active aerodynamics, Overtake Mode and the new MADRING circuit to the existing game. Players who do not own F1 25 can buy F1 25: 2026 Season Edition, while EA has already confirmed that the next full game in the series is planned for 2027 as part of what it describes as a multi-year strategic investment in the franchise. EA details the 2026 Season Pack here.

• • EA SPORTS WRC. EA SPORTS WRC remains available to buy and play, but it is better described as Codemasters’ final WRC title rather than an active franchise with another EA-developed instalment on the way. On 30 April 2025, Codemasters announced that it had reached the end of its work on WRC, that the 2024 season content would be its final expansion and that plans for future rally titles were being paused. The future official licence is already decided as well: WRC Promoter confirmed that NACON has exclusive rights to develop and publish official WRC games on PC and consoles for six seasons from 2027 through 2032. EA’s WRC development update can be found here, while WRC Promoter confirmed the NACON agreement here.
  • Need for Speed. Need for Speed remains one of EA’s best-known racing properties, with Need for Speed Unbound still the most recent mainline entry. The franchise is not currently operating on anything resembling the active annual programme seen with Formula 1, and EA has not announced a new mainline Need for Speed release to follow Unbound. Criterion has also been heavily involved with EA’s wider Battlefield operation, making the current position of Need for Speed very different from that of the F1 series.

This leaves EA’s racing portfolio in a much clearer position than simply saying that the company owns F1, WRC and Need for Speed. Formula 1 is the active licensed motorsport programme to watch under the new ownership structure, while EA’s future involvement with official WRC games has already ended and the next licence cycle belongs to NACON. Need for Speed remains valuable intellectual property, but there is currently no announced release schedule comparable to the Formula 1 programme.

The number that should concern racing fans

The financing of the acquisition is where the story becomes more relevant to individual studios and franchises. When the transaction was announced, EA said it would be funded through approximately $36 billion in equity investment and $20 billion in committed debt financing, with $18 billion of that debt expected to be funded at closing. That does not automatically mean cuts are coming, but it does mean this is a highly leveraged transaction in which financial performance will inevitably matter.

There are two reasonable ways to look at the move from public to private ownership. On one side, EA is no longer exposed to the same cycle of public quarterly market expectations, potentially giving management and its owners more freedom to pursue longer-term investments. On the other side, private ownership does not remove financial pressure, particularly when a transaction of this size includes billions of dollars in debt financing that ultimately has to be supported by the business.

EA reported approximately $7.5 billion in GAAP net revenue for fiscal year 2026, which gives some perspective on the size of the company relative to the acquisition. Its portfolio contains enormous global businesses including EA SPORTS FC, Battlefield, Apex Legends, Madden, The Sims and College Football, alongside smaller or more specialised properties. Racing therefore exists inside a company where individual franchises compete for development resources, marketing budgets and long-term strategic attention.

That does not mean Formula 1 is suddenly in danger, and there is currently evidence pointing in the opposite direction. EA has publicly described its Formula 1 plans as a multi-year strategic investment, delivered a substantial paid 2026 expansion and already committed to a new full game in 2027. The point is not to predict the cancellation of F1, but to recognise that under a new ownership and financing structure, the performance of every major investment becomes worth watching.

WRC provides useful context without needing to turn it into a prediction about Formula 1. Codemasters’ relationship with the championship ended, future rally development at EA was paused, and the next official game rights moved to another publisher. Licensed motorsport relationships are valuable, but they are not permanent, and their future depends on whether both sides continue to see enough value in renewing them.

The esports connection

The other part of this story sits outside EA itself and inside the broader gaming investments of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Gaming and esports are explicitly identified as strategic sectors for PIF, which has spent years building exposure to publishers, developers and competitive gaming infrastructure. The acquisition of EA therefore adds another major piece to an already extensive gaming portfolio rather than representing PIF’s first move into the industry.

That broader ecosystem includes the Esports World Cup, one of the largest multi-game competitive gaming events in the world and an event closely associated with Saudi Arabia’s gaming strategy. The first two editions were held in Riyadh, while the 2026 edition was originally scheduled to return there before being relocated to Paris amid the regional security situation in the Middle East. The competition is now running in Paris from 6 July until 23 August 2026, but its relocation does not change the Saudi backing behind the event. The 2026 Paris event and its dates are detailed here.

For sim racing, the change in the 2026 game lineup is more interesting than the change of host city. RENNSPORT, which had represented traditional sim racing at previous editions of the Esports World Cup, is not part of the 2026 programme, while Trackmania has entered the event as its only dedicated racing title. Trackmania’s tournament features 32 players and a $500,000 prize pool, giving racing a presence at the event but in a very different form from circuit-based motorsport simulation. Ubisoft Nadeo announced Trackmania’s EWC programme here.

It would be too strong to say that the Esports World Cup has decided that sim racing itself has no value. What can be said is that its organisers chose not to bring RENNSPORT back for 2026 and instead added Trackmania through a multi-year partnership with Ubisoft Nadeo. That suggests the event still sees competitive racing as useful content, but its preferred racing product this year is very different from the simulator used previously.

The EA acquisition creates an obvious connection worth watching because PIF is now part of the consortium controlling the publisher behind the official Formula 1 game franchise. That does not mean an EA SPORTS F1 competition is automatically coming to the Esports World Cup, and no such plan has been announced. It does, however, mean that one of EA’s owners now has interests on both sides of the equation: a major motorsport gaming property on one side and a major international esports platform on the other.

That raises a more useful question than simply assuming that sim racing will return to the event. Could EA SPORTS F1 eventually provide a commercially stronger route for traditional motorsport esports to appear on that stage, or does Trackmania’s selection indicate that the organisers prefer a more accessible form of competitive racing? There is currently no public answer, but the connection is now real enough to be worth following.

WRC should not be included in that future equation, because the situation there has already been resolved. EA SPORTS WRC may remain on sale, but EA will not control the next generation of official World Rally Championship games. From 2027 through 2032, that relationship belongs to NACON, which means any future WRC esports strategy tied to the official game will develop outside EA’s new ownership structure.

What the new owners have actually said

The official messaging surrounding the completed acquisition has focused on investment, growth and innovation rather than restructuring. Andrew Wilson said EA and its new partners intend to invest boldly and accelerate innovation, while PIF described entertainment and sports as areas of strategic focus. Silver Lake also explicitly referred to investing heavily in EA’s growth and mentioned artificial intelligence as a technology that could enhance both game development and player experiences.

The AI point is relevant to racing games, but it is important not to turn a broad corporate statement into a specific development claim that EA has never made. Racing games require large amounts of work across vehicles, circuits, environments, animation, audio, liveries, localisation, testing and other production areas, so new development tools could eventually influence parts of that process. EA has not announced that F1 cars, circuits or physics will be generated by AI, and any suggestion that this is definitely going to happen would go beyond what the company has actually said.

There is also a political dimension to the acquisition that cannot simply be ignored. Saudi Arabia’s growing investment across sport, entertainment and esports has faced sustained criticism from human-rights organisations and other observers, who argue that high-profile international investments can also serve a reputational purpose. Those criticisms existed long before the EA acquisition, and readers can reasonably reach different conclusions about what Saudi investment means for the gaming industry.

What is not really in dispute is the scale of the investment strategy. PIF has made gaming and esports a priority sector, the Saudi-backed competitive gaming ecosystem has grown rapidly, and EA is now one of the largest gaming assets connected to that strategy through the new consortium. For anyone following racing games and racing esports, that creates links between areas of the industry that previously looked much more separate.

What actually changes for racing players?

Immediately, very little changes when you switch on your racing game. The closing of the acquisition does not itself remove content, shut down servers, cancel F1 2027 or create a new WRC title, and EA did not announce a major racing restructuring alongside the completion of the deal. The more meaningful effects, if there are any, will become visible through future development decisions, staffing, budgets, licence negotiations and product announcements rather than through the ownership change alone.

• • For Formula 1: F1 25 remains the base game, but the current Formula 1 experience now includes the substantial paid 2026 Season Pack and the separate F1 25: 2026 Season Edition package. EA and Codemasters have already committed to another full game in 2027. That makes F1 the clearest active motorsport franchise inside EA and the most relevant one to follow under the company’s new ownership.

• • For WRC: there is no new EA-developed WRC game coming in 2026, and Codemasters has already said that its 2024 season content was the final expansion for EA SPORTS WRC. EA SPORTS WRC remains available, but future official WRC game development has moved elsewhere. NACON takes over the exclusive PC and console rights from 2027 through 2032, so that part of the future landscape is already known.
  • For Codemasters: the studio’s Formula 1 work remains important because EA has publicly committed to a multi-year plan for the franchise. Its decades-long rally lineage, however, is no longer represented by an active future WRC programme inside EA. Any major staffing or organisational changes affecting Codemasters would therefore be worth watching, but they should be reported when they happen rather than assumed in advance.
  • For Need for Speed: Unbound remains the most recent mainline game and EA has not announced its successor. The franchise still has enormous historical recognition, but its current development situation is much less clearly defined than Formula 1’s. Until EA announces what comes next, it is better to describe Need for Speed as a major property with an uncertain release roadmap rather than as an active annualised racing franchise.

None of this means EA’s new ownership is automatically good or bad for racing players. Private ownership can provide room for long-term investment, while the financing structure of a transaction this large can simultaneously create pressure for stronger financial returns and tighter prioritisation. The useful approach is therefore to separate what has already happened from what might happen next, rather than treating every possible consequence as inevitable.

The facts today are considerably clearer than they were when the acquisition was first announced. F1 has a major 2026 expansion and a new full game planned for 2027, EA’s WRC development has ended with NACON taking the official rights from 2027, Need for Speed has no newly announced mainline successor, and the Esports World Cup currently features Trackmania rather than traditional sim racing. Those are four different situations, but together they provide a much more accurate picture of where racing fits inside EA and the wider competitive gaming landscape following the takeover.

The next things worth watching are concrete announcements rather than rumours: the development direction of F1 2027, any organisational changes involving Codemasters, the eventual return of the official WRC series under NACON, and the racing strategy of the Esports World Cup after 2026. Those developments will tell us far more about the consequences of the EA acquisition than trying to predict studio closures or licence decisions before there is evidence for them. Until then, the most important change is simple: the takeover that was announced in September 2025 is now complete, and EA has officially entered its new era.

See you on the track!