Various proposals have been on the table and, sometimes, they stay around as plan B for any other interested stakeholders to conduct DD on. Different parties are willing to take different risks and sensible JV's are built on compromise. I'll speculate/riff more here later.
I was hesitant to share the News Limited releases, as they are written very carefully and raise many questions. However, I will say this. EA are out of time and don't really have the opportunity to wait out COVID-19. I'd say we're eligible for further COVID-19 project stimulus, as well. So, perhaps you could consider it an incentive?