Uploaded and Unfiltered: Real Talk on Healing, Creativity, and Mindset for Black Creators

Who Owns Your Fun? The $55B EA Deal and What It Means for Creators

• Jermaine Pulliam • Season 1 • Episode 117

Share episode

Send me a text! Be part of the show!

A $55B check just changed who steers some of the world’s most powerful game franchises—and it’s not just a finance story. We walk through what PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners now touch, from mobile hits and esports platforms to combat sports and global football, and why that concentration of power tends to flatten culture into safe bets and repeatable loops. If content programs our habits and emotions, consolidation raises a hard question: who benefits when everything starts to feel the same?

This conversation is equal parts map and motivation. If platforms get sold, rules change, and feeds homogenize, creators who act with intention can still set the tone. Curate inputs that lower agitation, make work that raises presence, and use your voice to model calm, connection, and courage. Ready to build the feed you wish existed and a creative business that lasts? Tap play, subscribe for more unfiltered strategy, and share this with a creator who needs a nudge today.


Book a session here: https://stan.store/CoachJermaine

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Good evening. Welcome back to another episode of Uploaded and Unfiltered. This week's episode is going to be a little different. Uh, for the podcast, earlier in the day, I was made aware of the purchase of EA, and it got my brain spiraling down this rabbit hole. I started doing some research, started looking up information, and I'm gonna share that with you today. I promise you, I'm gonna tie it into content creation and mindset and all that fun stuff. But first, hi. My name is Jermaine. I'm a mindset coach for black content creators, and it is my mission in life to help as many black content creators make as much content as possible. And I do that by helping them get rid of those emotional stucknesses that keep them from being great. This is like imposter syndrome, procrastination, anxiety, depression, hell. I even help with grief if that's something that you deal with. But today's episode, I am tying some of the real world into some of the things that I believe and think of when I envision a better world for all of us. So let's go ahead and start here. EA was purchased for$55 billion. Say that again. EA was purchased for$55 billion, meaning their share, their cost per share is like$210 per share. If you own some EA stock, congratulations, you probably got a little nice little chunk of change there. But this is who bought it. The buyers are three different entities Saudi Republic Investment Fund or PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. So the goal is to have everything said and done after approvers go through by the fiscal year of uh Q1 in 2027. So I don't think everything is official right now, but on the outside looking in, let's just let's just go down a list of these three individuals who, or not individually, these entities who purchase EA for$55 billion. And what does that what does that entail? Now, if you don't know, EA has a silly amount of games. I'm not about to go over all of them, but they of course they got Madden, of course they got The Sims, of course they got Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Apex. They own a bunch of different studios under EA, and unfortunately, they all are owned by this grommet of people. Piff, aka the Saudi or the Saudi Public Investment Fund, own a gaming, uh marketing company. I think it's a marketing company. It's called Savvy Games Group. They own the following Scopley, which is a mobile publisher for Monopoly Go, Stumble Guys, Marvel Strikeforce. They were purchased in$4.9 billion by Piff. And then I know maybe some of you heard of Niantic Games. They made Pokemon Go. They made this other game called Inverse. I think that was the name of that game. It was before or Ingress. Before Pokemon Go. But yeah, they bought Pokemon Go. They have Pokemon Go. I think that happened this year for 3.5 billion. They also bought uh esports platform, ESL plus face it. Never heard of that. Bought that three years ago. They bought the 10 cent backed esports operator, VSPO, for 265 million. Well, I don't think they bought them, they're just the biggest stakeholder. They did that a couple years ago. This is all Piff, by the way. This is all the Saudi public investment fund. They invested money in Newcastle United, the football club, I believe that's how that goes. Soccer team. Live Nation, they have a 5 million, 500 million stake and 5.7% in Live Nation. Didn't know that. And then they have a minor stake in Nintendo. Less than 5%. Okay. So that's that's Piff. That's all the things that they own. And I'll get into board my brain when after we get into some other ones. The next one is Silverlake. And maybe some of you heard of it. I didn't realize this. I heard rumors of it, but I honestly, if I'm being honest, I thought that was a plot in the fucking wrestling. But no, the WWE was purchased by TKO, which is owned by Endeavor, which Silver Lake owns. Like, so basically, Silver Lake owns WWE, UCF, all that, or UFC. I went to Central Florida. I always say UFCF, leave me alone. But they own that. They own uh the Manchester C, what's the Citigroup? City Football Group. Okay, got a football team. And then they have a software as a service company. Cool. And then you got the Affinity Partners, which is some dude named Jared Kushner. Maybe you heard of him. Um popping up all over the research I was looking at. And it looks like they just have fitness and health tech, sports adjacent. All of these companies, foreign companies, mind you, or not all of them, but has so much in a lot of the content that we consume, it got me to thinking, what's going on? What's happening? I have for the longest believed, and I think that that belief has gotten stronger over the years, that the content that we consume, whether that be video games, music, movies, TV shows, books, news, podcasts, pop any type of media we consume where we are actively listening and having a picture painted in our our subconscious mind or our conscious mind has the ability to influence us on levels that I don't think we fully are aware of. Where were what was I just at? Where were we at? Oh, soccer game. Okay, the girls had a soccer game Saturday. And as I was sitting there waiting for them to get the game going, I was just listening to the conversations, and they all at all of the conversations sounded like a sitcom, but like uh an amalgamation of every TV show from like the 80s till now, and a little bit of music in there because some motherfuckers kept yelling out 6'7. But it was it was eerie. Like part of me is like, what the fuck? Part of me was like, maybe that's how you can that's how you learn how to communicate. You watch content. I was like, no, that's not how no, no, that is not how you learn how to communicate. That's how you learn how to puppet and become what someone wants you to become. I think it's super dangerous, the uh lack of presence black people have on most TV shows, on most, and and everywhere. And that's what DEI was for, and that's what like we know left to their own devices that would get us out of here in a heartbeat. The problem with not seeing yourself when you're younger is you don't think it's a possibility, and because it's so ingrained here in the US, it's it's a reality for a lot of people. It was a reality for me for the longest. Because I think one of the first things that that goes as you grow up, or one thing they try to beat out of you during school is the imagination. Your imagination, and I've said this before, is the key to overcoming any obstacle or heartache or problem or anything that you can think of. Imagination is gonna get you through that always, because again, our mind causes emotions due to what it's responding to in our data set. And if that data is corrupted, if that data came in incorrectly, or if that data is old and we're still responding to it in real time, like as if it's happening now, that's not good for us. That's that's opposite of an amazing life. That's what causes anxiety, that's what causes stress, that's what causes people to freeze before they do something they really want to do. Past trauma, past anxiety, something that is not happening currently, or they like to overanalyze all the bad shit that could happen in the future, and yeah, that's gonna stop anyone in their tracks. But when you realize none of that is true, you just thought of it, and our brains are amazing, and they can't tell if what you're thinking of really happened, it is happening, it's going to happen. It doesn't know. It's just like, hey, this shit is, I see it, and let's react because I don't want to do that shit. Like I promise you, and your next thing that usually gives you anxiety, try to just, once you feel it spike up, just tell yourself like, hey, this isn't real, this is not really happening right now. This is how I want this to work out. And then think of the most amazing, fun, joyful, enlightening process you could think of, and just imagine how it's gonna feel, think about it, live in it a little bit. It's just as like doing that is just as good as worrying about it. I feel like people think more they worry about stuff, the more prepared they're gonna be. And that's bullshit. What it is, is people are super afraid of having to come up with something on the fly as if their life depended on it. So what I'm saying is like people want to be super prepared for everything, for all situations. Like, I understand having like an emergency bag if you're going out hiking, or like if you're traveling, have an emergency something. But like to overanalyze every single thing that you do in life to the point where you're not enjoying it because you are you spend so much time dealing with the stressors that didn't happen that you just thought of, and prepared for them. When you go out and do the things that you want to do, it's not as fun because you're not in the moment. You're still kind of scanning the room to make sure that everything is good. So all of these made-up thoughts that are in our head get amplified, get constructed and molded into what someone wants to think by the content that we consume. And so the largest thing that I thought was A, everything is about to get homogenized. There's gonna be a lot of content. There's gonna be, I feel like, secretly trying to push a specific message or a specific specific narrative, or a specific way they want to see the world. That's the thing that I don't think people realize. These big ass companies, who knows how diverse they are, but who gives a fuck? These big ass companies have an identity, have a culture, have a way that they view the world. That's going to seep into the shit that they make. I don't believe, especially now, that most companies are looking towards, okay, let's make sure that we have a little something for everybody. Let's make sure that we are being mindful of the things that we're putting in our game, make sure that the messages that we are saying are not fucked up or can't be construed in the wrong way. No, they're like, how can I get this money though? How can, yo, hey, how can I get this money though? And then a bunch of bullshit comes out. And with this EA situation, I feel like because it's$55 billion, they're they're gonna trying to get their money back. You know what I'm saying? So a bunch of bullshit's gonna come out. But it is what it is. As long as we are aware of it and mindful of it, like we just ignore it. I don't I don't think these companies realize what happens when we all get on one accord and say, no, look at Target. Wow. Shot to the face. Look at Sam's Club. What was another one? Was it Chick-fil-A or Starbucks? I don't know. All these motherfuckers. Like, I don't know why they don't realize, like, if we don't buy your shit, you don't exist. But part of it is people don't like to mobilize, people don't like to get on one accord because they feel like, well, if I'm boycotting Target and it doesn't really matter, yes. Everybody, I can't even like same with voting. People like, well, I'm just one person. Well, if you are with a group of people and you all think alike and you vote, make sure that you vote, make sure that you're paying attention to the the shit that's happening and vote, like, then you get what you want. But there's too many people that are scared to be themselves, scared to make decisions, scared to put themselves out in the limb. And hey, I I used to get that. I used to understand that. Telling you fear is one of those things that keeps you from doing a lot. We might wrap it up and disguise it as something else, but uh, it's fear. It's always fear. Uh, I don't want to stream on Twitch because uh I got kids. That's you're scared, bitch. That's all that is. I'm I'm too old to uh make content for TikTok. That's fear. You're not too old. There are 78-year-olds on TikTok making bank. Like, you're not too old to do anything. Unless like there's an age limit. There's like, hey, you can't be older than this age, else you can't do it. Then yeah, okay, but that's content is not that. You can literally I watch, oh my god, like lately, I've been allowing myself to just dulge in content. And we're gonna I'm gonna wrap this back into the EA thing and why I really want you motherfuckers to get on your content game. I watch this dude, like it's a shot. Uh, on the right-hand side is a guy at a counter, got a suit on, nice looking young man. On the back wall, there's a sign that says like buy sell trade or some shit. And it is clearly a jewelry store. And then there's a shot, dude from the left, or a woman from the left, or somebody from the left comes in. Hey, sometimes they're real fucking rude, sometimes they're super sweet, sometimes they're shocked at how much. Anyways, hey, I got this, uh, I got this bracelet. I was just wondering if you could uh tell me how much I want I can get for it. Okay, how much do you want for it? I was thinking like$500,$500, okay. And then he like does something real quick. It's like a cut, and then he comes back, he's like, How about I give you$5,000? And they're like, What? I'm gonna he's like, ah hold on, let me check the markets just for 14 carico, yeah. I'll get your ID on you. Okay, let me scan it with my little thing. Yeah, okay, and you know what? We can get you we can get you 6,700. You want a check or do you want cash? And that's it. That's the whole, that's it. That's the content. I don't know what the numbers look like, but if you would have told me that I would have been into this content, hell, a week ago, I'd been like, bitch, get out my face. Nah, I'm good. You're you're wrong. But no, this shit is invigorating. Love it. Like sometimes you get a nice dude, just like somebody's super grateful, somebody's getting 10k off of a bad dookie chain. I'm like, yo, do I have any gold that I need to get rid of? Because uh gold apparently is up there, which usually means that everything else is fucked. But I digress, anyways. Wrapping this back into EA, why I think everyone should start making content, content that you want to see, is because everything is about to get homogenized, everything is about to get, I feel, super toxic, super aggro. Because honestly, if I'm being 100% honest, I feel like most of the content, most of the TV shows, most of the music is put in place to keep the consumer at a level a certain level of agitation, a certain level of a certain level of anxious, a certain level of a bunch of shit that are all dictated by emotions that can be manipulated by TV shows, by music, by lyrics, by voices. I can manipulate you with my voice right now if I really wanted to get, but I'm not going to get into it. But you know what, you know what I'm saying? Like, all of these things have high manipulation. Like, hey, you've been watching a video scrolling, and it's puppies, cute puppies. What's the first thing that you say? Or something like, oh my god, this ain't cute. That is fucking weird to me. Like, it is an immediate emotion that gets triggered by the your eyes seeing this thing, and boom, maybe a little cute music playing. Like, I feel like people who do that automatically do not have full control over their emotions and their thoughts. And that's not like honestly, that's like 90, 95% of the pro uh the population. But that is a telltale sign for me. I'm like, okay. Or if you're out and about and you just instantly start dancing to whatever music on it, hey, I've been there, I've done it. But when I do it, I'm like, why am I why am I fucking dancing right now? And it's not like I'm embarrassed. Like, if you want to dance, dance. Have fun. But it's always like that slight dance. Like you're like, oh, I can feel it a little bit, but I want nobody to see me because I'm in public. Nah, if you're gonna dance, shake that thing. Wing that thing like a helicopter. I don't. Anyways, but when I instantly think things or instantly do stuff that I don't want to do or that I normally wouldn't do, I start analyzing those things. Like, for instance, if something triggers my anger, especially nowadays, I don't want, I don't ever want that to be an emotion that I go to when I am cautious, calm, collected, and and trying to be helpful. I never anger is not an helpful emotion. Anger does not bring closeness. It is not one of those things you think of when you think of togetherness. It does not provide a connection. Anger is uh a waste of time. It might if you I don't want to talk shit about people, so I'm not going to, not today anyways, but I don't I feel like anger is one of those things that we can do away with. And the more we analyze what we get angry about, and if you're being honest with yourself, and if you're willing to show a little empathy, most of the things we ang we're angry about are fucking stupid as hell. Like, for instance, I may or may not have got upset that my wife was cleaning. Like on the surface, in the house, specifically vacuuming. And like not in the area that I can hear it. It was not about an annoyance of hearing a noise or anything. And I'm not even gonna get into what it was, but it was a dumb reason to be upset, like full stop. And I feel like that happens a lot. The more control we have over our emotions, over our thoughts, over our feelings, the more control we have over how our life unfolds, how our life happens, how we reach our goals. So, with this homogenizing of all this content that's about to happen, and with fucking TikTok getting sold off to was it Cisco? Why is that what am I thinking? Cisco. Or does it start with a P? I don't even give a fuck right now. It got sold. I feel like TikTok's about to look, it's gonna have a specific look to it. It's gonna look a little, a little uh homogenized, I'll say. And I would encourage you, don't look at this cell as oh my god, what am I gonna do now? Fucking, if you do shorts, take them shits over to YouTube. Start making long form content. Don't think about, oh, I don't know how to do that. Like literally get in front of a camera, do what you do on TikTok, but do it for like four minutes. Like, I think YouTube has always been one of my end goals. Not end goals, one of my goals is to have a uh profitable that's the word I'm looking for. We'll go with that. A profitable channel, uh monetize. There it is. Monetize channel on YouTube because it's the ultimate I am doing what I want and I'm getting paid for it. Now, some people you can see me doing that junk and jive shit, or like you can tell when I'm doing this for the bag, but you don't have to be that. Again, I don't think people realize how much money A, you can make on YouTube, and B, it's a reasonable amount of money to make and still maintain your current life and maybe even upgrade it a little bit. Like it does not take that much more money. And the benefits of being on YouTube and being monetized is you don't have to go into work, you don't have to talk to anybody, you don't have to deal with other people's bullshit. The more that I'm learning about humans, the more that I'm learning about influence and the effect of listening to someone bitch for 40 hours, the more I I sympathize with people who have to go in and work a nine to five or who have to deal with rude, fucked up people. More power to you. I don't know how you do it. Couldn't be me. Won't be me anytime soon. Anyways, but that is it. I just wanted to encourage as many people as possible to not look at this EA thing and like freak out, or not look at this TikTok thing and freak out, but use this shit as fuel, use this shit as motivation to start really digging into the thing that you want to do with your content. I have stepped into a specific bag myself. My YouTube has been hopping, my TikTok has been hopping, and I'm having so much fun right now. Like by the end of the year, TikTok and YouTube partnered. If I stick with TikTok, we'll have to see what this merger situation looks like or this buyout, Oracle. Did I say Oracle? Anyways, uh, and of course the coaching business. If there is a stuckness or something that is holding you back emotionally, and you just don't want to deal with it anymore, set up a session. Get in contact with me. Let's go through the process, let's do the work. And I promise you, by the end of that session, that feeling that you were feeling that was holding you back will be gone. Think hyperbole, this isn't magic. I'm not gonna hypnotize you, I'm not like make you forget. No, you're going to update the software in your brain, aka your subconscious mind's gonna get the new information about that data and be like, oh, that's not a threat. Cool, got it. And you're not gonna like you're gonna be able to think about it and be like, oh, I don't feel that anger, anxiety, grief, procrastination, and pulsar syndrome anymore. Y'all bodied that. That was dope. I'm on that note, I'm gonna fuck out of here. Thank you for listening. The link to my services will be in the description of this podcast. If you know anyone, anyone who can benefit from conversations like these and more, please share the podcast with them. Uploaded and unfiltered. I promise you, I will be interviewing somebody soon. I'm only saying that out loud because I do want to interview somebody. Do I have anybody lined up? I don't know, but I do. You know what? I just thought somebody, I've been seeing their content all over. I saw I got to talk with them briefly at TwitchCon. They already said they were down. I need to hit them up. I need to hit them up and uh make that happen. I think I'm gonna do that. Anyways, appreciate y'all. Thank you for listening. As always, detrimental, keep creating content, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.