Board game sales in Germany, one of the world\u2019s biggest tabletop markets, returned to growth last year to shake off a difficult 2022 rocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global energy crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sales jumped 9% in 2023 according to new data from German trade association DVSI<\/a>, reversing the 5% decline recorded the previous year thanks to strong across the board performance – with TCGs such as Pokemon, Magic and Lorcana doing especially well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spieleverlage<\/a>, a group within DVSI of 19 game publishers from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, said that even without TCGs the market grew by 3% – decoupling itself from the wider toy market, which it said saw a decline of 5% last year according to initial projections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The board game segment was already on track to undo the damage caused by 2022 in August of last year<\/a> – but DVSI said at the time that game publishers were expecting a further positive development for the Christmas period, which accounts for around 40% of annual sales in the toy trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2023 result is even more impressive given that German GDP fell by 0.3% last year, and private consumption by 0.8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ulrich Brobeil, managing director of DVSI and Spieleverlage, took aim at the German government for causing uncertainty among consumers and a deterioration in the consumer climate, blaming its “inconsistent, poorly crafted policies and unnecessary bureaucracy”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The strong figures are a boost to the German tabletop gaming sector ahead of the world’s biggest toy fair, the Spielwarenmesse<\/a>, in Nuremberg on January 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tabletop game and puzzle companies will be the biggest subsector at the show, with 288 exhibitors from 39 countries. About 58,000 visitors attended the trade show last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Spieleverlage chairman Hermann Hutter said, “2023 was a real year of success for the games industry. A year ago, when the toy fair was successfully restarted, we were hoping that the games industry would achieve a slight increase in 2023, but the fact that this actually happened, given the difficult overall economic situation in Germany, came as a bit of a surprise to our industry.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n