What if you bought Electronic Arts in 1995?
US Tech · Games. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play80.8× · S&P 500 same money: $14,783
$1,000 in Electronic Arts at the start of 1995 would be worth about $80,769 today — 80.8 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
What happened: Electronic Arts was bought out in 2025.
The story
Electronic Arts was founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, who marketed game developers like rock stars. It grew into a publishing giant built on annual sports franchises such as Madden NFL and FIFA, whose yearly updates proved remarkably dependable revenue. The shares climbed steadily through the early 2000s, as EA bought studios and signed exclusive licences, and peaked before the financial crisis.
The late 2000s were rough: a failed hostile bid for Take-Two, a slow adjustment to digital and mobile games, and a collapse of more than two thirds in the share price by early 2010. EA recovered by shifting towards digital sales and live-service revenue, particularly the Ultimate Team modes in which players buy card packs to build their squads, a practice regulators in several countries scrutinised as gambling-like. The FIFA name was dropped in 2023 after a licensing dispute, and the game carried on as EA Sports FC. In 2025 EA agreed to be taken private by a consortium including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Silver Lake, in what was billed as the largest leveraged buyout on record.
The lesson: Recurring revenue from loyal fans can survive almost anything, including losing a famous brand name; EA's franchises outlasted multiple strategic mistakes.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $2.60 | $80,769 | $14,783 | 80.8× |
| 2000 | $21.00 | $10,000 | $4,626 | 10.0× |
| 2003 | $25.00 | $8,400 | $7,727 | 8.4× |
| 2005 | $60.00 | $3,500 | $5,763 | 3.5× |
| 2007 | $50.00 | $4,200 | $4,789 | 4.2× |
| 2008 | $58.00 | $3,621 | $4,626 | 3.6× |
| 2010 | $18.00 | $11,667 | $6,071 | 11.7× |
| 2012 | $21.00 | $10,000 | $5,312 | 10.0× |
| 2015 | $47.00 | $4,468 | $3,301 | 4.5× |
| 2018 | $105 | $2,000 | $2,519 | 2.0× |
| 2020 | $108 | $1,944 | $2,092 | 1.9× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1995, turning $1,000 into $80,769. The S&P 500 from that same year: $14,783.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Electronic Arts is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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