Mature Markets and Board Games

We've got a very diverse game store. Sure, we don't sell comics or frisbees, but we try to sell a wide variety of games in the key, four hobby game areas: CCGs, RPGs, Board and Card Games, and Tactical Miniatures. We use strong inventory practices to make sure each department is healthy. Diversification has been our calling card for years. Yesterday I realized two game companies now account for 43% of our sales so far this year.

The first one is an easy guess, it's Wizards of the Coast. They produce the biggest game in the game trade, Magic the Gathering, along with the comeback kid, Dungeons & Dragons. They also dabble in board and card games. The second game company is a bit of a surprise, it's the Asmodee Group with the other 16%. Asmodee Group owns Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder, which is how they've gotten that second position. You wouldn't notice this if you weren't reading game trade news.

Our top 15 games account for 62% of sales.
The top 30 usually accounts for around 80% of our sales.
We sold games from 195 different companies.

What's most interesting to me about Asmodee, is they've bought the top position in the board game market. Each of our other game categories is what marketers would traditionally call, mature. There's a market leader with well over 50% of sales. Those games have been Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, and Dungeons & Dragons (until recently and that's another story). But what about board games? Board games has lacked a market leader, from that traditional definition sense.

Has Asmodee done it? Not quite, but close. Our Asmodee Group board game market share is 36%. Our next closest company is Wiz kids, with 7.5% market share. Their our Pepsi to Asmodee's market leading Coke. After Wiz Kids, it drops off significantly, like a mature market.

Why does this even matter? First, it's interesting that the French holding company that owns Asmodee Group, that buys things like parking lots, is also keenly interested in Ticket to Ride and X-Wing as a means to make money. It shows a faith and understanding of the global hobby game market that is not expressed elsewhere, especially when it comes to actual money. You can say what you want, but backing it with millions of dollars is the best speech.

Anyone with even a modest amount of money could do this, but they haven't until now. Does this represent a cultural shift? A cultural shift is what we're all looking for in the game trade. A cultural shift means we're not in a bubble, in a cyclical phase. It means this is the tip of the iceberg, an indication we might be catching up to Europe really. A cultural shift will mean we view money and risk differently. Not only will we be more willing to take risks, but other, more mainstream entities will as well. This new opportunity brings a huge amount of instability with it, which has traditionally been dangerous for the the game trade.

Second, it marks a maturation of the market and how board game companies will position themselves moving forward. It will likely mean a change to the distribution model. Not only is it likely exclusives will be pulled, such as with Days of Wonder annoyingly being sold only by Alliance, but Asmodee is positioned to distribute themselves, much as we do with Wizards of the Coast and Games Workshop (the other market leaders). That will only strengthen Asmodee as they bring in additional publishers and titles from Europe.

There are lots of retailer grumblings about the distribution model right now, with a lot of that aimed at how distributors handle Asmodee Group products. Distributors are acting as the ultimate arms dealer in these boom times, selling to us as well as Amazon and a slew of online stores. How each does this is a major bone of contention among retailers. Do they fulfill brick and mortar first or last? Do they sell to Amazon? Do they "floor" games for Amazon, holding them back? A direct to retailer model (which exists already with FFG), would be appreciated, especially if it came with organized play support. If we can do it with Games Workshop, why not with a company with three times the sales volume?