If the board game industry was a Monopoly board, you could say publisher Asmodee is the player who owns Boardwalk and Park Place, and all of the greens, yellow, and orange properties.
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Asmodee already owns popular gaming companies Days of Wonder (Ticket to Ride, Five Tribes), Fantasy Flight Games (Star Wars X-Wing, Android Netrunner), Spot-It, and the English rights to Catan, and is looking to bolster its portfolio even more (via ICv2).
The company is in the midst of exclusive negotiations with F2Z Entertainment Inc. That’s a big deal because F2Z is the largest board game publisher out there that isn’t owned by Asmodee. F2Z recently did some acquiring of its own when it purchased board game creators Plaid Hat Games (Mice & Mystics, Dead of Winter) earlier this year, not to mention that it counts FiloSofia’s extremely popular Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy series amongst its portfolio.
If Asmodee were to acquire F2Z, they would also gain English and French rights to Carcassonne and French rights to Catan. All of these titles would be then published under the Asmodee North America umbrella. Asmodee would get some amazing titles underneath its brand, but I imagine there are those who don’t like the idea of one publisher having so much power within the industry.
In their previous acquisitions, Asmodee largely let the companies govern themselves, and didn’t seem to mess with their brands all that much. It remains to be seen if that process will continue, if indeed the deal goes through.
