Andrew Wilson (born 7 September 1974) is an Australian businessman who has been the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

(EA) since September 2013. He has also been chairman of the company since 2021.

Early life and education

Wilson grew up in a working-class family in Victoria and

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. In his youth he played rugby and basketball at school, coached Taekwondo, and played golf, surfed, swam, and ran. He attended

Queensland University of Technology The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point, Brisbane, Gardens Point ...

, but dropped out before obtaining his law degree.

Career

Early career

In the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, Wilson, living in Sydney, built Australian websites for international corporations. He subsequently also helped raise venture capital and launch IPOs for dot-com start-ups.

Electronic Arts

In May 2000, Wilson joined

' small video-game development studio on Australia's Gold Coast, which created V8 supercar, rugby, cricket, and surfing video games but needed someone with real experience in how the sports were actually played. That studio closed in 2002 due to lack of scale. Wilson then worked in the company's Asian and European markets for several years before moving to

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they imitated real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" (EASN) ...

and then becoming an executive producer on the ''

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

'' franchise. In August 2011 he was appointed executive vice president of EA Sports, and he also took on duties as executive vice president of the company's Origin platform in April 2013. Six months after the resignation of John Riccitiello, Wilson was chosen to be the new CEO of the company on September 17, 2013. In his first year as CEO, Wilson initiated a "player-first" corporate strategy, and offered more free-to-play games and in-app purchase options. In a move towards a transformation from physical software to digital, he also greatly increased EA's digital offerings, and launched EA Access, a subscription-based digital service for

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

players that allows unlimited play across a selection of EA titles. Electronic Arts had a large revenue increase and its stock price doubled in 2014. In 2021, Wilson became chairman of the board of EA, following the retirement of Larry Probst. In 2023, he restructured the company into two organizations – EA Sports and EA Entertainment (formerly EA Games).

Personal life

Wilson is married, and has one daughter and one son. He holds a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Wilson and his family live in

Atherton, California Atherton ( ) is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 6,823 as of July 2023 estimates. The town's zoning regulations permit only one single-family home per acre in new subdivisions, though smal ...

. In 2022, along with several other Silicon Valley executives, he opposed a proposal to allow more than one home on a single acre in Atherton, which is one of Silicon Valley’s most exclusive and wealthiest towns.

Awards and accolades

* 2010 — Winner, BAFTA, Games/Sports — FIFA 2010 * 2010 — Winner, BAFTA, Games/Use of Online — FIFA 2010 * 2014 — #5 on BBC.com's list of best CEOs of 2014 * 2014 — #6 on ''Forbes'' list of America's Most Powerful CEOs 40 and Under * Winner — Motley Fool's The Best Tech CEOs of 2014 * 2015 — #3 on ''Fortune'' magazine's Business Person of the Year list * 2015 — #3 on ''Forbes'' list of America's Most Powerful CEOs 40 and Under * 2015 — #58 on ''Adweek''s Power List: The 100 Most Influential Leaders in Marketing and Tech * 2017 — '' Variety'' 500 * 2019 — ''Forbes'' Innovative Leaders * 2022 — '' Variety'' 500 * 2023 — '' Variety'' 500

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Andrew 1974 births 21st-century Australian businesspeople Australian chairpersons of corporations Australian chief executives Australian entertainment industry businesspeople Australian expatriates in the United States Businesspeople from Victoria (state) Chief executives in the technology industry Electronic Arts employees Intel people Living people People from Geelong Video game businesspeople