EA has published its last financial report as a publicly-traded company ahead of its $55 billion take-private merger with an investor consortium that includes the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund.
The deal is expected to complete later today on August 4, 2026, and received regulatory approval despite some U.S. lawmakers voicing concerns over the buyout.
As noted in a 10-Q filing, EA saw overall net revenue increase by 19 percent to $1.98 billion during the first quarter ended June 30, 2026. Operating income increased by 89 percent year-on-year to $513 million.
EA’s live service catalog was largely responsible for that upswing, with the company noting that live service revenue for the quarter increased by 7 percent year-on-year to $1.47 billion. That bump was the result of increased sales of extra content within Battlefield 6 and EA Sports FC.
Net bookings for the quarter—which EA calculates by adding total net revenue to the change in deferred net revenue for its online-enabled games—rose by 4 percent year-on-year to $1.39 billion, primarily driven by sales related to EA Sports FC, Apex Legends, and American football series Madden NFL and EA Sports College Football.
Full-game revenue totalled $514 million during the quarter, $438 million of which was attributed to digital sales. In fact, EA noted that the vast majority of its full-game revenue has been derived from digital sales on platforms such as Xbox and PlayStation over the past three fiscal years, perhaps providing some indication as to why Sony is preparing to move away from physical releases in 2028.
“As measured based on total units sold on Microsoft’s Xbox One and Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 4 and 5 rather than by net revenue, we estimate that 81 percent, 78 percent, and 73 percent of our total units sold during fiscal years 2026, 2025, and 2024, were sold digitally,” reads the filing.
EA explained that digital sales combined with an increase in live service revenue generally result in the expansion of the company’s gross margin, as costs associated with selling a title digitally are lower than selling physical releases through retail channels.
Despite what might sound like positive financial news, EA continues to make layoffs and last year eliminated a number of roles at Skate developer Full Circle and its Battlefield division. At the same time, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was handed $38.6 million in salary, bonus, and stock awards for presiding over a year of franchise success and integrating generative AI technology into the publisher’s production workflows.