Savvy Games Bets $37.8 Billion on a Hub It Bought

Savvy Games Group still has four years to turn a SAR 142 billion ($37.8 billion) Public Investment Fund wager into a global games and esports hub by 2030. Founding chief executive Brian Ward left on September 1, 2026, after the fund bought the pipes of the industry more than it grew 250 Saudi studios from scratch.

PIF deputy governor Turqi Alnowaiser, who already runs the fund’s international investments, is the interim boss. The original 2022 bet is now a holding company with a live $6 billion China deal, a sister giant in Electronic Arts, and a domestic jobs target that still looks far off.

The $37.8 Billion Envelope Was Always a Buyout Plan

On September 29, 2022, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented Savvy, wholly owned by PIF, as the vehicle that would make Saudi Arabia “the ultimate global hub for the games and esports sector by 2030.” The same announcement set three hard scores: 250 games companies in the Kingdom, 39,000 jobs, and a SAR 50 billion GDP contribution (about $13.3 billion).

We are harnessing the untapped potential across the esports and games sector to diversify our economy, drive innovation in the sector and further scale the entertainment and esports competition offerings across the Kingdom.

Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, announcing the Savvy Games Group strategy

The cash map was not a studio-building budget. SAR 50 billion was set aside to buy a leading publisher. SAR 70 billion was for minority stakes in companies that fit a development agenda. SAR 20 billion was for mature industry partners. SAR 2 billion, about 1.4 percent of the envelope, was for early-stage games and esports firms.

THE FOUR PROGRAMS IN THE 2022 PLAN

Ward later described the games side in plain language. The way to get there, he said, was largely inorganic mergers and acquisitions. That is the wager the 2022 math already implied, and it is the wager his successor inherits.

Scopely Became the Machine That Bought Pokémon Go

Savvy’s first operating buy was esports. On January 24, 2022, Modern Times Group sold ESL Gaming for $1,050 million, and Savvy folded it together with FACEIT into ESL FACEIT Group at a combined $1.5 billion. Tournament ops and competitive matchmaking sat in the portfolio before a publisher did.

The publisher arrived in 2023. Savvy agreed on April 5 to buy Culver City’s Scopely for $4.9 billion and closed in July. Monopoly Go had launched that April, three months before the close. PIF’s 2026-2030 strategy says the game surpassed $5 billion in revenue in 2025, faster than any other mobile title, and reached 500 million unique users. Scopely, in the same document, is called the world’s eighth-largest games publisher and the top mobile games company in the United States.

Savvy then used that cash engine to buy more catalogue. Scopely completed its $3.5 billion Niantic purchase on May 29, 2025, taking Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, Monster Hunter Now, and more than 400 staff. A majority stake in Istanbul’s Loom Games followed, at a studio value of more than $1 billion. On March 21, 2026, Savvy agreed to buy Shanghai’s Moonton, the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang studio, from ByteDance for $6 billion. That deal was still waiting to close in early September.

Closed operating purchases already total $9.9 billion before Moonton: $4.9 billion for Scopely, $3.5 billion for Niantic’s games, and $1.5 billion for ESL FACEIT Group. If Moonton clears, the original “one leading publisher” line will have become a string of mobile catalogues plus a tournament group, and the SAR 50 billion publisher bucket will have been overshot.

SAVVY’S OPERATING COMPANIES

• Scopely: Culver City mobile publisher, bought for $4.9 billion, now the vehicle that bought Pokémon Go and Loom.
• ESL FACEIT Group: Cologne and London esports group assembled in 2022, with later add-ons in broadcast and player tools.
• Steer Studios: Riyadh development studio, first titled Grunt Rush in April 2025.
• Moonton: Shanghai mobile studio agreed at $6 billion, still awaiting close, with Zhang Yunfan set to stay as chief executive.

Savvy’s own site now lists more than 5 billion hours a year on Scopely games, more than 2.1 billion hours of EFG content watched since inception, and offices across 22 countries. The hub, on that measure, already exists. It exists in Culver City, Cologne, London, and, if Moonton clears, Shanghai.

How Much of the Original Bet Is Still Unspent?

Ward said in March 2026 that Savvy had spent around $13 billion of the original envelope, less than a third of the total. That cash deployed figure is separate from the listed shares PIF moved across in January 2026, about $12 billion of Nintendo, Bandai Namco, Koei Tecmo, NCSoft, Nexon, and Square Enix. Take-Two already sat under Savvy through a subsidiary. Embracer had taken a $1 billion Savvy cheque for an 8 percent slice in May 2022; a later planned $2 billion follow-on was pulled in 2023, and Embracer later broke itself apart.

Around $25 billion would still be available if the 2022 funds have not been shrunk (the $37.8 billion envelope minus around $13 billion spent). Moonton’s $6 billion is not in that spent total. Close it, and a large piece of the remaining dry powder goes in one shot to a game whose tracked app-store take has been flat to down, justified inside the group by esports reach in Southeast Asia rather than by a rising commercial line.

The other live question is whether PIF tops the envelope up at all. The fund has been tightening other long bets, and Savvy is no longer a startup. Ward wrote as much when he left.

As Savvy embarks on its next period of transformational growth, this is the right time for new leadership for that evolution.

Brian Ward, then CEO of Savvy Games Group, in a September 1, 2026 staff note

He was asked on September 21 to stay as an advisor. It was not clear he had accepted. Alnowaiser, a banker rather than a games lifer, now sits in the chair with a closer line into PIF and with Electronic Arts already closed on the other side of the house.

170 People in Riyadh Versus 39,000 Jobs

The 2022 plan did not only buy foreigners. It promised a local industry: 250 companies, 39,000 jobs, and a talent ladder from classrooms to studios. That half of the wager is the part that still has to be built inside the Kingdom.

Prince Faisal bin Bandar, a senior figure in the national games push, said that in 2018 Saudi Arabia had one game company and one esports team. By the summer of 2025, he said, there were more than 38 development studios and 120 esports teams. That is a real rise from a standing start. It is also a long walk from 250 companies.

PIF’s own 2026-2030 strategy is blunter on headcount. Its two Riyadh studios employ around 170 staff, Steer and Mirai, with 91 percent of Mirai’s workforce listed as Saudi nationals. Mirai is Scopely’s Riyadh room. Steer is Savvy’s. Savvy as a whole has grown to about 4,000 employees worldwide, a figure that counts Culver City and Cologne as much as Riyadh. Those three counts are not the same job. The 39,000 figure is a 2030 sector target, not a current payroll.

THE 2030 SCORECARD

The quieter work is still running. Savvy’s Play to Learn contest with the Ministry of Education drew more than 719,000 students from 7,705 schools and more than 155,000 game concepts. University programs now sit at King Saud University, King Abdulaziz University, Alfaisal University, and others. Nine66’s incubator is being lined up with NEOM’s Level Up accelerator so studios can move from prototype to funding. Roblox, Unity, AWS, and HP have signed skill and tools pacts. Scopely’s Mirai room, Xsolla, Territory Studio, and Side have opened or pledged Riyadh offices. Steer has shipped Grunt Rush.

None of that matches the scale of a $4.9 billion cheque. It is the part of the bet that 2030 will actually grade, because a hub that employs 170 people in Riyadh and 4,000 people somewhere else is a holding company with a local annex.

The EA Buyout Lives Outside Savvy

PIF closed the Electronic Arts take-private on August 4, 2026, with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. Shareholders received $210 a share, a 25 percent premium to the $168.32 unaffected close, on an enterprise value of about $55 billion. The consortium had announced the deal on September 29, 2025, and stockholders approved it on December 22, 2025.

A Brazilian filing put PIF at 93.4 percent, Silver Lake at 5.5 percent, and Affinity at 1.1 percent. PIF rolled 24,807,932 existing shares, about $5.21 billion at the deal price, rather than cashing out its old 9.9 percent stake. The buyout was not a Savvy line item. It sits beside Savvy, which is the political point. EA is too large, and too American, to be presented as another Riyadh acquisition vehicle.

Having been a minority investor in the company for more than five years, we have a deep understanding of Electronic Arts’ unique platform, massive global sports and gaming franchises, and iconic intellectual property.

Turqi Alnowaiser, PIF deputy governor and head of international investments, on the Electronic Arts close

Alnowaiser is now the man in both rooms. He spoke for PIF on the EA close, then took Ward’s chair at Savvy a month later. No public plan has been issued for how the two groups will be run together. Any combination talk in the market has been tied to Moonton clearing first, which still has not happened. Until it does, Saudi Arabia owns a private American publisher and a separate global games vehicle, and the people inside those companies are left to guess which one is the flagship.

Owning catalogues at this scale also changes what can ship. A sovereign owner that hosts the Esports World Cup, funds the Esports World Cup Foundation, and holds stakes across Japan, Korea, and the United States is not a passive financial sponsor. Content rules, event calendars, and which titles get a Riyadh stage now travel with the same chequebook. That is the political risk sitting under the financial one.

Riyadh Wants Publishers in the Room This December

Saudi Arabia’s earlier gaming investment push already made the Kingdom a fixture on the events calendar. PIF says EFG, with the 30 percent Hero Esports stake, accounts for about 50 percent of global esports market share, and that the Esports World Cup drew 350 million hours of viewing in 2025. The 2025 Cup carried a $70 million prize pool; the following edition was listed at $75 million. The inaugural Esports Nations Cup, though, was moved from November 2026 to November 2027 after a review of the wider regional situation. Ward had warned in March that fighting linked to the Iran conflict could hurt the region’s standing as a place for global games businesses.

The next test is not another trophy. It is whether publishers will fly in to do ordinary business. Kingdom of Gaming is set for December 1-3, 2026, in Riyadh, with Savvy Games Group, Ubisoft, and Roblox named as global gaming leaders. The point of the gathering is to put Riyadh on the calendar as a place the industry comes to make deals, not only a place that writes the deals from a sovereign balance sheet.

DATES THAT MOVED THE BET

1. January 24, 2022: Modern Times Group agrees to sell ESL Gaming to Savvy at a $1,050 million enterprise value, to be merged with FACEIT.
2. September 29, 2022: The Crown Prince announces the SAR 142 billion Savvy plan and the 2030 company, jobs, and GDP targets.
3. July 2023: The $4.9 billion Scopely buy closes, three months after Monopoly Go launches.
4. May 29, 2025: Scopely closes the $3.5 billion purchase of Niantic’s games business, including Pokémon Go.
5. January 2026: PIF moves about $12 billion of listed gaming shares into Savvy.
6. March 21, 2026: Savvy agrees to buy Moonton from ByteDance for $6 billion; the deal remains open.
7. August 4, 2026: PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners take Electronic Arts private at about $55 billion.
8. September 1, 2026: Brian Ward leaves the Savvy chief executive job; Turqi Alnowaiser becomes interim chief executive.
9. December 1, 2026: Riyadh hosts Kingdom of Gaming with Savvy, Ubisoft, and Roblox as named leaders.

The 2022 envelope bought a real mobile company, a real esports group, and a seat at the cap tables of Nintendo and its peers. It has not yet bought 250 Saudi companies or 39,000 jobs. The person now in Ward’s chair is the PIF deputy governor who closed Electronic Arts.