Asmodee buys flip and write pioneer Welcome To… from Blue Cocker to continue acquisition spree

Asmodee has continued its revived acquisitions spree by picking up the Welcome To… IP and game range from French publisher Blue Cocker.

The deal hands the board game publishing and distribution giant control of a flip-and-write series which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies since Benoit Turpin’s breakout design Welcome To Your Perfect Home was released in 2018.

Subsequent releases have included standalone sequels Welcome to the Moon and Welcome to New Las Vegas, while its implementation on online platform Board Game Arena has racked up more than 3 million played games, and averages over 3,000 unique players daily.

More new versions seem likely to be on the way following the acquisition, with Asmodee head of collections Mathieu Aubert saying, “This acquisition goes beyond bringing a strong IP into our portfolio. We see huge potential to expand the Welcome To… universe, and the team already has plenty of ideas to bring it to life. I look forward to sharing more about our projects in the coming month.”

Asmodee announced in November 2024 that it was preparing to “reignite” its strategy of buying up smaller board game publishers and distributors, saying at the time that it had a pipeline of more than 20 acquisition opportunities.

That expansion kicked off with the opportunistic purchases of Zombicide and Cthulhu: Death May Die from financially troubled CMON in 2025, and has accelerated this year with deals including the striking buyout of French social and party game publisher ATM Gaming in a deal which could reach €250m.

Other acquisitions from Asmodee this year include returning to CMON to buy Sheriff of Nottingham and publisher Japon Brand, buying Time’s Up from R&R Games and picking up the remaining 45% of Exploding Kittens it did not already own.

Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler said during the announcement of the revived M&A strategy that many of its targets were businesses it already knew “in and out” through existing commercial relationships.

He specifically highlighted publishers behind successful games it already distributed as potential targets, alongside social and party game businesses and IPs, hobby game studios and local distributors.

Welcome To… fits withing that strategy, with Asmodee already handling Blue Cocker titles in markets including the UK and US. In Asmodee’s home market of France, however, Welcome To… and other Blue Cocker Games are currently distributed by Hachette subsidiary BlackRock.

The original game helped popularise the flip-and-write format, replacing dice rolls common to roll-and-write games with shared cards which allow players to make their choices simultaneously.

Asmodee SVP of tabletop games Benoit Clerc said, “Welcome To… established itself as landmark titles in modern board gaming, combining elegant game design with exceptional accessibility.

“We have tremendous respect for the work accomplished by the Blue Cocker team, Benoit Turpin, and everyone who contributed to the success of the game and their different iterations.

“We are excited to welcome this intellectual property into Asmodee’s portfolio and join our line-up of great family games and look forward to building its future.”

Blue Cocker founder Alain Balay added, “From the very beginning, our ambition was to create a game that would stand the test of time and bring people together around the table.

“We are incredibly proud of everything Welcome To… has achieved over the past years, and we are confident Asmodee will now carry the brand forward and introduce it to even more players around the world.”

Blue Cocker was launched by former aeronautical engineer Balay in 2013, and operated as a one-person business until the success of Welcome To… and the company’s international sales allowed it to expand to a five-person operation in 2019, he recently told French newspaper La Gazette du Midi.

He said exports accounted for 60% of Blue Cocker’s revenue at that point, but have since fallen to just 10% amid ongoing global financial and political uncertainty.

Balay added that despite that, the French market has held up well despite concerns about a resurgence in inflation in the country.

Blue Cocker’s remaining titles include 2014’s Medieval Academy, 2016 release Meeple War and 2025’s The Last Droids, while its main 2026 release so far has been corporate deckbuilder SAN.

The company’s 15th release, the two-player cooperative title Les Yeux Fermés designed by Antonin Boccara and Julien Prothière, is slated for a 2027 release according to its BoardGameGeek page.

Asmodee has kept its potential acquisitions tightly under wraps, but has plenty of financial firepower for further deals.

Its net sales rose 23% to €1.68bn in the financial year ending March 2026, while its adjusted EBITDA – its earnings before taxes, depreciation, amortisation and irregular one-off costs – was up about 25% to €285.4m.

The company’s net debt, meanwhile, stood at 1.6x adjusted EBITDA at the end of June, rising to 1.7 times once M&A commitments were included – down from 2.1 times a year earlier and comfortably below the company’s 2.5-times leverage target, given it significant headroom for M&A.

Despite Asmodee’s long-time image as a board game publishing heavyweight, more than 72% of its revenue now comes via its distribution of other companies’ games – up from an already hefty 63% in the previous financial year to March 31, 2025.

TCGs make up the lion’s share of Asmodee’s annual net sales – about 60% in the 2025/26 financial year, up from just over 50% across the preceding 12 month period.

The company’s own board game publishing operation, meanwhile, saw its net sales fall 5.8% in the last financial year – while net sales for the first quarter of this year were down 9.8% compared to the same period in 2025.

Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler was asked directly during a Q&A session on Asmodee’s latest financial results in May if the company was still primarily a board game publisher, or whether it was “increasingly becoming an infrastructure company for TCGs”.

He said in response, “We have insisted a lot on the fact that one of the strengths of Asmodee is to be a publisher, but the first strength that we do have is our global reach across all categories, from TCGs and board games.

“That’s the superpower of Asmodee – and then being a very strong publisher is a way of accelerating performance.

“So I would say that there is no change, we continue to capture opportunities across the board wherever they come from… our aim is to be a dominant player, bringing all games to the market, anywhere they can.”

Last week Asmodee named Exploding Kittens CEO Carly McGinnis as head of its global publishing operation, putting an executive who helped transform a record-breaking Kickstarter game into an international brand in charge of a portfolio including Catan, Ticket to Ride, 7 Wonders and Dobble/Spot It.

The move puts McGinnis into a hugely influential position within the tabletop industry. Asmodee’s chief product officer has responsibility for its studios, franchise development, licensing and studio marketing, according to the organisational structure the company published ahead of its stock market listing last year.