Asmodee is by far one of biggest publishers in the tabletop industry, and it could be up for sale.
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A new report from Reuters indicates that Asmodee Group is currently exploring a sale, putting its current value past 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion USD). The French company has greatly expanded over the past several years and is one of the biggest players in the tabletop space. Sources familiar to the deal say that the company has hired investment bankers to run a sale process.
That actually brings up one of the most interesting questions regarding a sale, which is who on earth could possibly buy them?
To put it into perspective, Asmodee has been in the business lately of acquiring other publishers and licensees. In the last few years the company has acquired Days of Wonder (Ticket To Ride, Five Tribes), Fantasy Flight Games (Star Wars Imperial Assault, Star Wars X-Wing, Arkham Horror, Android Netrunner, Game of Thrones, Star Wars Armada, Star Wars Legion), Plaid Hat Games (Mice & Mystics, Dead of Winter, Ashes, Stuffed Fables), Catan Studios (Catan), Space Cowboys (Splendor, T.I.M.E Stories, Elysium, Via Nebula), and most recently Z-Man Games, which holds titles like Love Letter, Carcassonne, and the hit Pandemic series.
That’s a lot of studios and a mass amount of titles, so who is left in the space to actually absorb them? No other details were given, and neither owner Eurazeo or Asmodee itself have commented on the report. Rurazeo took over Asmodee in 2013 in a deal worth $143 million euros, and with all the additional properties under its belt, it makes sense why the worth has skyrocketed.
Wizards of the Coast is one of the other big players in the space and they were eventually purchased by Hasbro. Could Hasbro be doing the same with Asmodee? That is pure conjecture of course, but the theory of this being a way to spin the company out of Eurazeo and into its own independent company has also been brought up.
We’ll let you know when more details are available, but in the meantime let us know what you think of this developing purchase in the comments. Is this good for tabletop gaming in general, or could it adversely affect the industry? Let us know!
