Jared Kushner Reportedly Bonded With Saudi Crown Prince Over Video Games Before Brokering $55B EA Deal

A new New Yorker profile of Jared Kushner's diplomatic work reveals a surprisingly casual origin story for the biggest leveraged buyout in gaming history — Kushner and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman apparently bonded over playing video games together, and that relationship eventually led to the $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts.

According to the profile, Kushner connected MBS with EA CEO Andrew Wilson last August. The two met in Neom — the ambitious, largely-still-on-paper futuristic city MBS is building on the Red Sea — and played a round of golf. An American source with ties to Middle Eastern leaders told The New Yorker plainly: "Jared brought M.B.S. the deal." From there, MBS assembled a consortium including Kushner's firm Affinity to buy EA for $55 billion, making it the largest leveraged buyout in history. The deal cleared CFIUS — the federal panel that reviews foreign investment for national security concerns — last month, despite EA handling enormous amounts of user data. CFIUS is largely staffed by Trump administration officials, and the president holds final authority over its decisions.

The acquisition has already cast a long shadow over EA. The debt load from a leveraged buyout of this scale is enormous, and reports suggest EA is looking to slash around $700 million in annual costs — a cost-cutting campaign that could reshape or gut studios across the publisher's portfolio. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's other major gaming vehicle, Savvy Games Group, is reportedly uncertain about how the kingdom's various gaming investments will be organized now that EA is in the picture. The whole situation points to a gaming giant now navigating serious financial pressure under new ownership with its own competing priorities.

The New Yorker piece doesn't specify what games Kushner and MBS actually play together, which leaves that particular detail to the imagination. What's harder to laugh off is how a casual gaming friendship apparently set in motion a deal that will define EA — and arguably the broader games industry — for years to come.