Asmodee’s BoardGameArena buyout reaps rewards as service passes 10 million accounts

BoardGameArena, the online board gaming platform bought by Asmodee three years ago, has surged past 10 million registered accounts following several years of rapid growth.

BGA, which started life in 2010 as an online tournament website exclusively available in France, took eight years to reach its first million accounts – but has seen user numbers accelerate rapidly since in the wake of Covid lockdowns and the takeover by board game giant Asmodee in 2021.

Asmodee’s influence had already boosted BGA’s profile ahead of the takeover, however, with the addition of the publisher’s games such as 7 Wonders in 2018 lending more legitimacy and heft to the growing platform.

But the online service’s operation has swelled even more heavily since joining the Asmodee stable, going from about 250 available games in 2021 to more than 900 this year.

Almost five million hours-worth of board games are played on the platform each month, with thousands of tables frequently on the go at any one time for popular games such as Cascadia, Heat: Pedal to the Metal and Ark Nova.

The service remains unmatched in terms of competitors, although several small-scale online gaming platforms such as TableTopia, Yucata, Rally The Troops and 18xx.games. French online board gaming platform Boite a Jeux closed suddenly late last year.

Concerns were raised at the time of Asmodee’s takeover that some games could end up being kicked off the platform if they were seen as competitors to the board game giant’s own titles – concerns which have proven unjustified, with Asmodee sticking true to its pledge at the time of its buyout that BGA would remain completely independent.

Other unfounded fears centred around games seeing physical sales or availability suffer upon receiving a digital BGA adaptation – but the opposite generally seems to be true, with physical titles receiving increased sales thanks to BGA getting the games in front of more prospective purchasers.

BGA co-founder Greg Isabelli said in a Reddit AMA two years ago, “If you spend one hour in a board games shop, you will find few people looking at games one by one, reading everything and trying to select a good game for them.

“But a large part of the people are just entering the shop and are asking ‘hey, last week we played some game with trains on a map and it was terrific: do you have it?’.

“… so the thing is: people are buying a lot games they already played. I checked my own library as an exercise, asking myself for each game ‘why did I bought[sic] this one?’ and found out that for ~70% of them, I played them before I bought them.

“Thus, this is why BGA is powerful to generate sales: if you played a game 100 times on BGA this week and if some friends are coming at home, why would you propose any other game that this one?”

Physical board game publishers have also benefited from a potentially lucrative revenue stream via BGA, with some of the profits from premium memberships on the site being redistributed to publishers and developers based on how many times their premium titles are played.

While BGA can be used for free, games involving premium titles can only be created by paying subscribers – although free members are then able to join those games.

Premium membership costs have risen by 50% for an annual subscription since Asmodee’s takeover – from $24 to $36 – and 25% for monthly subscribers, from $4 to $5.

Isabelli, who left the company amicably last June, spoke at the time about the price rises, saying, “It is quite obvious that the ‘historic prices’ we used to have were too low.

“The catch-up that has been done these two last years was welcome. Among other considerations, something that everyone should keep in mind is that the BGA revenues are shared with Premium games publishers as ‘royalties’.

“Significant royalties means more money to create new future games, but also make it more probable to have them on BGA.”

BGA’s symbiotic relationship with physical board gaming was highlighted earlier this year when BGA and Asmodee organised the first world championships for Azul, one of the top three games played on the platform.

More than 4,000 players from around the world competed in eight qualifying tournaments on BGA, before eight finalists met up at the Museu Nacional do Azulejo in Lisbon, Portugal – with Tung Yat “Sunny” Cheng
from Hong Kong ultimately crowned the winner.

Asmodee said the success of its first hybrid tournament would “most likely result in other iterations in the future”.

Thomas Kœgler, Asmodee’s deputy COO who is set to take over as CEO of the company in the coming months, oversaw the acquisition of BGA in 2021.

He said, “What we love with Board Game Arena is that the platform makes board games accessible to everyone.

“It is the perfect way for players to discover a huge boardgame library for free and play their favorite games wherever they are.

“For publishers and game designers, it is the perfect way to display novelties or classics games and to build their communities.”