WotC WotC Makes Over $1B In 2021!

According to ICv2, D&D publisher WotC made over $1 billion in total sales in 2021, including $952M in tabletop games.

WotC is the first (and only) billion dollar publisher in tabletop RPGs, although much of this revenue will also be due to Magic the Gathering. It is responsible for a staggering 72% of Hasbro's total operating profit.

Interim CEO Rich Stoddart indicated that tabletop games grew 44% and accounted for 74% of the $1.3B sales for WotC in 2021. The division at Hasbro is 'Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming', so the remained came from the Digital Gaming side of things.

WotC Sold Over $950 Million in Tabletop Games in 2021

As Company Revenues Passed $1 Billion for the First Time

icv2.com

WotC - WotC Has A New President

With outgoing president Chris Cocks being promoted to the top job at Hasbro, WotC has a chief -- Microsoft's Cynthia Williams! Williams is joined by Tim Fields as Senior Vice President. Over at Microsoft, Williams was General Manager and Vice President, Gaming Ecosystem Commercial Team and was...

www.enworld.org

 

[eyeheartawk]

Huh.

I guess investing in artificially scarce cardboard makes a good return.

 

[Lyxen]

According to ICv2, D&D publisher WotC made over $1 billion in total sales in 2021, including $952 in tabletop games.

$952 out of $1 billion does not seem like much...

 

[Ulfgeir]

Is it just me, or does the numbers in that article not add up?

How can WoTC have a larger operating profit than Hasbro as such has net earnings? Or am I missing what each of those actually are?

edit: I get that revenue, is all money in.

So that means that Hasbro earns an additional $5 Billion on selling toys/licenses...

 

[qstor]

This might be sour grapes but I think this gives more "fuel to the fire" that WotC and 5e are the 900 lb gorilla of the RPG community.

 

[Jer]

So for tabletop game brands if you look at their website Wizards tabletop games are Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. IIRC Avalon Hill was broken off into a separate unit and I thought all of their games went with them.

So did they make nearly a billion dollars off of just those two brands last year, or do they have more game brands they don't advertise on their website? (I thought Duelmasters was also Wizards but there's not a hint of it on the corporate site so shrug)

 

[Mezuka]

Duelmasters

"As of December 2006, the English sets of Duel Masters were discontinued by Wizards of the Coast due to weak sales and was hosted by Takara Tomy in Japan for a brief time.[2] However, in June 2012, Wizards of the Coast relaunched Duel Masters under a new franchise named Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters. Based on the existing Duel Masters brand, Kaijudo featured an online game, trading card game, and a television series.[3][4] In 2014, the company announced they would stop production of the paper version of the game in the United States.[5]"

 

[embee]

Huh.

I guess investing in artificially scarce cardboard makes a good return.

No.

Convincing other people that your pieces of artificially scarce cardboard has a good ROI.

Merely owning said cardboard, however, is only slightly more fiscally prudent than purchasing NFTs.

 

[Ibrandul]

So for tabletop game brands if you look at their website Wizards tabletop games are Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. IIRC Avalon Hill was broken off into a separate unit and I thought all of their games went with them.

So did they make nearly a billion dollars off of just those two brands last year, or do they have more game brands they don't advertise on their website? (I thought Duelmasters was also Wizards but there's not a hint of it on the corporate site so shrug)

It’s almost all from D&D and MtG. WotC used to produce games outside those two areas until quite recently (for example the Transformers CCG), but now the few products in their catalog that aren’t actually D&D or MtG are small games based on those two IPs, such as Dungeon Mayhem and the new D&D-themed version of The Great Dalmuti.

I suspect there may even be a corporate policy in place now to the effect that everything WotC releases must be either D&D-branded or MtG-branded, precisely because recent history has shown those are the brands that make big money for the company, and their recent forays outside those IPs have been less reliably profitable.

 

[Jer]

Merely owning said cardboard, however, is only slightly more fiscally prudent than purchasing NFTs.

Hey, at least when the bottom falls out of the cardboard market you have a piece of cardboard with a pretty picture on it that you can use in crafting projects.

 

[Burnside]

Hot take: I feel that WotC's creative talent should make slightly more money than they do.

 

[embee]

This might be sour grapes but I think this gives more "fuel to the fire" that WotC and 5e are the 900 lb gorilla of the RPG community.

I don't think that anyone can reasonably disagree with that assessment.

Being the 800 lb. gorilla is, in actuality, a value-neutral assessment of the marketplace. The gorilla is simply the dominant player in the space who must be reckoned with in order to compete. Microsoft is the 800 lb gorilla. Adobe is an 800 lb gorilla.

Say what you will about 5e, whether you like its features or if you find it flawed, etc. The fact remains that it sells, far and away, more product than the rest of its competition.

 

[Morrus]

Hot take: I feel that WotC's creative talent should make slightly more money than they do.

How much do they make?

 

[Willie the Duck]

This might be sour grapes but I think this gives more "fuel to the fire" that WotC and 5e are the 900 lb gorilla of the RPG community.

I mean, yes and no. They were the 900 lb gorilla of the RPG community when they were 100 M. Either way, the question then becomes, 'yes, and?' Such and such other TTRPG is or isn't a fruitful endeavor regardless of how well WotC is doing. In all honesty, D&D succeeding probably helps the other systems by increasing the number of gamers (a static percentage of-which, I feel, branch off into non-D&D games).

 

[Jer]

I don't think that anyone can reasonably disagree with that assessment.

Being the 800 lb. gorilla is, in actuality, a value-neutral assessment of the marketplace. The gorilla is simply the dominant player in the space who must be reckoned with in order to compete. Microsoft is the 800 lb gorilla. Adobe is an 800 lb gorilla.

Say what you will about 5e, whether you like its features or if you find it flawed, etc. The fact remains that it sells, far and away, more product than the rest of its competition.

@qstor used the word "community" not "market", which gives the statement a slightly different context. As far as the market is concerned, D&D is the market. Anyone with a game in print gets it onto game store shelves only because they already sell D&D. When D&D is performing poorly historically the whole RPG market is down. D&D is the only game that is large enough and mainstream enough to pull new players into the market these days - and honestly one of the only ones in a position to even try.

But the RPG community as a whole - that's a bit different. That includes not just publishers but players and small publishers who can't get onto store shelves and even hobbyist publishers. If you're just a player and not interested in selling games it can be somewhat disheartening that the only game that folks want to play is D&D - and if you're a small enough publisher that you aren't worried about getting onto store shelves other than itch or drivethru that attitude can feel disheartening as well.

So it's a mix. D&D is actually a gentle giant these days when it comes to traditionally marketed RPGs, and as a publisher Wizards doesn't see other publishers as competition for the most part (outside of their idiocy during the 4e GSL days) but as a game D&D eclipses everything else around it, and that can be frustrating for folks who are interested in something different.

 

[Burnside]

How much do they make?

The national average salary for a Wizards of the Coast employee in the United States is $81,242 per year. Employees in the top 10 percent can make over $128,000 per year, while employees at the bottom 10 percent earn less than $51,000 per year.

Sources:
Working At Wizards of the Coast: Employee Reviews and Culture

354 Salaries at Wizards of the Coast Shared by Employees

 

[Umbran]

How much do they make?

When talking about this scale, factors of ten are probably sufficient - those creators make five, maybe six, figures.

Maybe some of the creative folks ought to be making high-six to seven figures, given the value of what is produced?

 

[HammerMan]

Hot take: I feel that WotC's creative talent should make slightly more money than they do.

I normally don't talk about money (it's like politics and not really D&D related) but this gives me a chance...

summons high horse

"If a company can make a billion dollars and a good portion of that is from a small team, that small team better make a LOT of money."
"If wotC has 100 creative employees (I doubt it) and 50 support employees (janitor payroll hr goblin interns) and each of those 100 creatives got paid 1 million dollar, and half of thos support were paid 3/4 of a million with the other half being low paid 1/2 million that would be 100 mil + 18.75 mil + 12.5 mil that would make the payroll cost $132,000,000 o 13.2% of that... lets say that overhead is expensive (it is) and cost tripple that outrageous payroll cost $396,000,000... that is stil 528,000,000 or just ove HALF A BILLION..."

"Anyone want to bet no creative at wotc make $500,0000 a year (half of the above) or even $250,0000 (1/4)... what do you think the odds are they make $100,000 a year(10% of the above)? I wonder if they make the $73,000 a year magic number for happiness."

so yeah... everyone at WotC BETTER get a BIG bonus if not a HUGE raise out of this...

 

[HammerMan]

The national average salary for a Wizards of the Coast employee in the United States is $81,242 per year. Employees in the top 10 percent can make over $128,000 per year, while employees at the bottom 10 percent earn less than $51,000 per year.

Sources:
Working At Wizards of the Coast: Employee Reviews and Culture

354 Salaries at Wizards of the Coast Shared by Employees

damn I hate that my guess was right... top 10% are making slightly over 10% of what the lower half should be if it is that profitable...

 

[Burnside]

Also, I shouldn't single out the creatives just because they're the most sexy. They should ALL be making more money.