WotC WotC Generates 75% Of Hasbro's Profit

ICv2 is reporting that WotC generated $110M of Hasbro's $147.3M operating profits in the first quarter of this year, with an increase of 15% on last year.

Of overall sales, WotC generated (only!) 22% of Hasbro's $1.1B.

The growth is attributed to Magic: the Gathering and D&D. Recently, Hasbro restructured with 'WotC and Digital Gaming' getting it own division.

WotC - D&D Gets A New Division At Hasbro

Hasbro is reorganizing and giving tabletop gaming -- Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: the Gathering -- a higher priority. According to the Wall Street Journal, WotC's revenue last year was $816 million (a 24% increase on 2019). Brian Goldner, Hasbro's Chief Executive, says WotC is predicted to...

www.enworld.org

 

[doctorbadwolf]

D&D/Magic must be seriously high-margin products to get that sort of ratio.

It helps that nearly all the D&D 5e books are selling quite well even years after release, but are priced at the same level as when they sold much less well, especially after newer books came out, in previous editions.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are 562 products on DMsGuild that have sold between 1,000-2500 copies. That's somewhere between 562,000 and 1,500,000 sales.

There are 189 products that have sold 2,500-5,000 copies, and 62 that have sold 5,000+ copies. Millions of sales.

What OneBookShelf made in 2007, several years before DMsGuild even existed, is irrelevant. And at this point DMsGuild has far eclipsed the other OneBookShelf sites in terms of sales volume.

These are some really interesting but totally unsourced claims. Where can I find the source?

 

[Burnside]

These are some really interesting but totally unsourced claims. Where can I find the source?

Here is a listing of DMsGuild's sales "metals", and how many products have earned each metal:

Dungeon Masters Guild

Here is a breakdown of how many sales each "metal" represents:

Metal Rankings & Other Questions

Note that Adamantine, the highest level metal, is for products that have sold 5,001 units and up. Some of these have sold a LOT more than 5,000 units - for example, Matt Mercer's blood hunter and gunslnger classes, or Keith Baker's Eberron books. So the estimates I gave in terms of units sold was extremely conservative.

 

[Burnside]

Incidentally, here's a listing of DriveThru RPG's metals, and how many products have earned them:

DriveThruRPG.com

The fact that DMsGuild's units sold at each level are so close to DriveThruRPG's despite DMsGuild only existing since 2015 tells you how quickly DMsGuild's sales rates have eclipsed those of DriveThruRPG.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Here is a listening of DMsGuild's sales "metals", and how many products have earned each metal:

Dungeon Masters Guild

Here is a breakdown of how many sales each "metal" represents:

Metal Rankings & Other Questions

Note that Adamantine, the highest level metal, is for products that have sold 5,001 units and up. Some of these have sold a LOT more than 5,000 units - for example, Matt Mercer's blood hunter and gunslnger classes, or Keith Baker's Eberron books. So the estimates I gave in terms of units sold was extremely conservative.

Thank you, this is very interesting stuff. And yeah I agree with no cap the 5000+ could be very high (though I am skeptical MM's classes have made crazy money given they're PWYW). Most interesting thing so far is there are more products in the "Silver" category than "Copper". Also I note almost every single book I personally bought on DMsguild is in Adamantine.

 

[Morrus]

The fact that DMsGuild's units sold at each level are so close to DriveThruRPG's despite DMsGuild only existing since 2015 tells you how quickly DMsGuild's sales rates have eclipsed those of DriveThruRPG.

Well, there's a whole other dimension to that. DMsG creators can't use Kickstarter or their own storefronts.

I sometimes wonder whether DTRPG creating a crowdfunding platform of its own would work. That said, the other crowdfunding platforms out there now haven't really put a dent in Kickstarter, so it would be a heck of a challenge.

 

[Burnside]

Well, there's a whole other dimension to that. DMsG creators can't use Kickstarter or their own storefronts.

I sometimes wonder whether DTRPG creating a crowdfunding platform of its own would work. That said, the other crowdfunding platforms out there now haven't really put a dent in Kickstarter, so it would be a heck of a challenge.

Yes, totally - I'm not trying to make an argument one way or the other about which site or strategy works best for creators. I'm just refuting the idea that DMsGuild revenue is negligible for WotC, and also that DMsGuild unit sales are less than DriveThruRPG sales (DMsGuild clearly does more sales volume than DriveThruRPG).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The fact that DMsGuild's units sold at each level are so close to DriveThruRPG's despite DMsGuild only existing since 2015 tells you how quickly DMsGuild's sales rates have eclipsed those of DriveThruRPG.

???

I meaaaaaaan I'm not really see that as a compelling claim unless we have figures for DTRPG from say 2014. Do we? It would be very easy to make/dismiss that claim if we did. Without them, it's impossible to properly evaluate that claim without incredibly hard work going through large numbers of products and comparing when they were originally added (if that's even possible).

The only categories which are strikingly close, to me, are the top two, Mithral and Adamantine. That is suggesting that if you sell BIG UNITS you wanna have a DMsguild product. Especially if you're a smaller publisher.

DMsguild:

2646 products (11.95%)​

2765 products (12.48%)​

1534 products (6.93%)​

904 products (4.08%)​

562 products (2.54%)​

189 products (0.85%)​

62 products (0.28%)​

DriveThru:

14333 products (13.99%)​

15539 products (15.17%)​

7476 products (7.3%)​

3705 products (3.62%)​

1441 products (1.41%)​

260 products (0.25%)​

113 products (0.11%)​

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm just refuting the idea that DMsGuild revenue is negligible for WotC, and also that DMsGuild unit sales are less than DriveThruRPG sales (DMsGuild clearly does more sales volume than DriveThruRPG).

You haven't succeeded in either claim absent other figures. We can probably work some math to figure out whether it's negligible or not, but that hasn't actually been done, and we need backdated figures to show that DMsguild has "clearly more sales volume". If these can be provided, then you can "refute" or say it's "clear" but that is not yet viable.

To be clear, an alternative explanation re: volume would be that DTRPG saw a gradual uptick in usage at some point and that it's actually selling at the same sort of rate as DMsguild (or possibly higher) when it comes to newer products.

In fact, this is actually kind of supported if we look at the Adamantine products for DTRPG. Cyberpunk RED, which came out what, late 2020 (as this isn't the cut-down version) appears to be at the top (I mean, that may be deceptive, we don't know the exact ordering, but it isn't alphabetical or publishing date nor last updated, so I suspect that's it). Equally, Ancestry and Culture, which is June 2020, is up there, and Alien, December 2019. Most of the top is battlemaps, which would make sense.

I can go on, but it looks like, apart from battlemaps, a very large percentage of DTRPG Adamantine products are from the last three years.

This would tend to suggest a massive and somewhat recent surge in RPG sales generally.

EDIT - As a purely anecdotal aside, I'd note that if I look at my purchases on DTRPG, I don't buy much until 2013, and then it gradually starts to speed up quite a bit. If I look at my RPG bookshelves too, that's about the year when I increasingly buy less actual RPG books and more PDFs.

 

[MGibster]

Golden goose would be the conventional English phrase. Golden Girls are awesome but very different:

The Golden Girls - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thank you for being a friend and posting this.