It's been over a week since a quarterly earnings call revealed that Hasbro (HAS) subsidiary Wizards of the Coast saw a 15% bump in sales over the last year. The company owns niche hobby IPs like "Dungeons & Dragons" and the "Pokémon" and "Magic: the Gathering" trading card games.
Even more impressive than the 15% growth is the fact that, according to Hasbro's CEO Chris Cocks, the majority of that profit comes from one game in particular.
Wizards of the Coast Grew Out of Personal Fandom
Wizards of the Coast (WotC) came together in the early '90s. The company takes its name from the owner's own personal "Dungeons & Dragons" campaign, so it was a dream come true to acquire D&D and its parent company TSR in 1997. But before TSR, WotC was creating and acquiring other roleplaying games.
In 1993, the company acquired the rights to a trading card game called "Magic: the Gathering." The fantastical, detailed game is played by over thirty-five million, and has both a physical and digital presence in the game community. Some individual collector's cards are valued at six figures.
Wizards of the Coast is still bringing in the fun-bucks for its parent company Hasbro, which bought WotC in 1999. There's an upcoming D&D movie in the works, which will provide plenty of marketing and revenue opportunities for the company, and it appears it's preparing for it.
The company just opened up a new video game studio called Skeleton Key. The studio is currently hiring for multiple positions that indicate more WotC video games are on the horizon. It's likely they'll be focused on WotC's most successful IPs, including "D&D" and "Magic the Gathering". And with the D&D movie coming soon, Wizards of the Coast could be the source of some serious gains for Hasbro.
WotC is Brewing Good Things For Hasbro
The company is leaning heavily into creating more "Dungeons & Dragons" content, but its "Magic: The Gathering" that blew up WotC's sales numbers this past year. In fact, the game brought in more than $100 million across multiple platforms.
Chris Cocks, CEO of Hasbro made no bones about the fact that the acquisition is working financial magic for the company.
"Wizards of the Coast is an important and vital business for us. It’s been a major growth driver for the company. And we’ve had a great first half of the year for the Wizards business overall. For the first half of the year, we see it up 5%, and we’re continuing to project at the high end of our range of upper single digits to lower double digits growth for the entire year," Cox said in Hasbro's Q2 earnings call.
"In terms of the composition of that business, Wizards tends to be very MAGIC-heavy. MAGIC is probably about 70% to 80% of that business overall. And we tend to be — between the D&D brand and the MAGIC brand, it tends to be very North American-centric. About 75% of our overall sales take place in the U.S., Canada and Mexico."
During what some consider to be the beginning stages of a recession, it's hopeful to see leisurely hobby properties like roleplaying games go up in sales. It'll be interesting to see if Wizards of the Coast continues upward momentum for Hasbro as it capitalizes on its two iconic fantasy franchises.
