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Report: EA has had acquisitions talks with Disney, Apple, NBCUniversal and Amazon

Report: EA has had acquisitions talks with Disney, Apple, NBCUniversal and Amazon

US publishing giant Electronic Arts has reportedly had M&A discussions with a number of big companies, including NBCUniversal.

As reported by Puck, the FIFA giant was in talks with the entertainment giant about a potential merger. Negotiations apparently fell apart in the last month due to "disagreements over price and structure". Discussions had been going on for several weeks, with the expected result to be NBCUniversal holding a majority stake in the newly-formed merged company, with EA CEO Andrew Wilson at the helm.

It also seems that EA has had discussions about a merger or acquisition with the other corporate giants like Disney, Amazon and Apple. Negotiations with the House of Mouse were going on as recently as March. Sources have said that EA has been "persistent in pursuing a sale" for a few years now.  

EA spokesperson John Reseburg told Puck that it doesn't comment "on rumours and speculation relating to M&A".

Were EA to be bought, it would be the latest in a growing number of big corporate acquisitions in the games space. Microsoft, for example, bought Bethesda parent firm ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion last year before announcing its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion in January of this year.

Disclaimer: Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist and writer who has worked on projects with EA in the past. 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.