{"id":5921,"date":"2026-02-11T14:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/?p=5921"},"modified":"2026-02-12T15:37:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T15:37:43","slug":"record-magic-the-gathering-success-powered-hasbro-to-4-7bn-revenue-for-2025-remains-its-primary-growth-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/record-magic-the-gathering-success-powered-hasbro-to-4-7bn-revenue-for-2025-remains-its-primary-growth-engine\/","title":{"rendered":"Record Magic: The Gathering success powered Hasbro to $4.7bn revenue for 2025, remains its ‘primary growth engine’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Veteran toy and game maker Hasbro<\/a>‘s increasing reliance on Magic: The Gathering’s runaway success continued last year, with the trading card game’s revenue soaring 59% to mark its strongest annual performance yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hasbro saw its overall revenue rise almost 14% last year to $4.7bn, driven by record 45% growth in its Magic, D&D and digital gaming division Wizards of the Coast<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Wizards was a standout, anchored by record Magic revenue”, said Hasbro CFO and COO Gina Goetter, who added in an earnings call following the company’s 2025 financial results reveal that Wizards “remains our primary growth engine”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magic’s record-breaking year was capped off by a storming fourth quarter, which saw revenues from the game up 141% compared to Q4 2024 on the strength of the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Final Fantasy releases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wizards’ revenue increased 45% to almost $2.2bn across all of 2025, with operating profit of just over $1bn – while Magic’s revenue grew nearly 60% across 2025 powered by Universes Beyond sets, as well as “ongoing strength in backlist and Secret Lair”, Hasbro said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stellar performance of Wizards, and Magic in particular, is in stark contrast to Hasbro’s consumer products segment \u2013 which includes Nerf guns, Transformers and Peppa Pig toys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That segment saw revenues drop 4% last year “amongst macro and retailer volatility brought on by tariff announcements in Q2”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goetter said Hasbro expects Wizards to deliver mid-single-digit revenue growth in 2026, “supported by a healthy release cadence and continued engagement across the Magic ecosystem”, while Hasbro as a wider business is expecting revenue growth of 3% to 5% this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking about expectations for Magic’s continued success in 2026 Hasbro CEO and director Chris Cocks told the earnings call, “I think it really comes down to several growth vectors. The first one is distribution growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“We’re seeing meaningful growth in our Wizards Play Network. That was up 20% last year. We think it’s going to be up double digits this year again. We’re seeing incremental distribution as the brand expands and the player base expands. So I think mass market and non-WPN-based distribution growth exceeded last year WPN growth and will exceed it again this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Player growth has been robust. I think the organized play metrics we’re giving you are just kind of hardcore or core player growth, the people who play in stores. Our metrics for non… kind of ‘hardcore’ players are a little more loose, but we think that those are growing well in excess of that 20%. And importantly, as we’re bringing on new kind of casual fans or new to MAGIC fans and collectors, they are sticking around. And you’re seeing that evidenced in robust backlist and higher organized play participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So what we’re seeing going on with Magic is a virtuous cycle of there’s more places to buy, there’s more people playing. They’re engaging longer and sticking around. And that just leads to increased set over set performance like we’re seeing with Lorwyn. And we see that continuing into 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Not to mention, we’ve got a stacked lineup of partners. You’ve got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Hobbit, Marvel Super Heroes and Star Trek plus some real fan-favorite sets like Lorwyn and Strixhaven on tap for this year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hasbro’s annual results reveal came the same day it announced it had signed a multi-year licensing partnership to make it “the global primary toy licensee for the world of Harry Potter” and the upcoming HBO series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Product begins in 2027, covering “dolls, role play, action figures & collectibles, interactive plush, board games and more”, Hasbro said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Harry Potter franchise won’t yet be making its way to Magic, according to the Wizards of the Coast community team, who posted to Reddit to say, “The Magic Multiverse has its own school of Magic at Strixhaven with plenty of secrets still to explore. Our Universes Beyond roadmap currently doesn’t have us visiting any others.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harry Potter-related deals have come under fire from parts of the board game hobby in the last year due to ongoing anti-trans campaigning from the character\u2019s creator, JK Rowling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer Codenames publisher Czech Games Edition faced a boycott from some of board gaming\u2019s biggest and most influential reviewers<\/a>, including Shut Up & Sit Down and No Pun Included, after deciding to release a new Harry Potter-themed version of the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CGE has since apologised \u201cunreservedly\u201d for failing to take into account how \u201cthe harmful views of the story\u2019s creator have escalated into harmful actions\u201d, and committed to donating 100% of the game\u2019s profits to appropriate charities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month Upper Deck<\/a>, the publisher of the Legendary series of deck-building board games, was urged by the Tabletop Game Designers Association not to create a Harry Potter-based tabletop title, after the company announced a deal for the \u201ccoveted\u201d Harry Potter licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upper Deck said on January 7 that it would begin creating collectibles for the Harry Potter franchise, starting with two sets of trading cards due for release later this year, adding that it was \u201cexcited to bring its iconic brands and flagship products to the world of Harry Potter\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the TTGDA plea and rising numbers of comments across Upper Deck\u2019s social media calling out the decision, the publisher made a single-sentence response on BlueSky<\/a> and a BGG thread<\/a> saying \u201cUpper Deck has no plans to produce Harry Potter games at this time\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more stories like this direct to your email inbox, click here to sign up for BoardGameWire’s free email newsletter. \n\nAnd if you’ve found our reporting interesting or useful, please consider a paid subscription to help support our journalism!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magic’s record-breaking year was capped off by a storming fourth quarter, which saw revenues from the game up 141% compared to Q4 2024 on the strength of the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Final Fantasy releases. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[949,2122,6,135,34,691,31,37,139,370,32,36,33],"class_list":["post-5921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-949","tag-avatar-the-last-airbender","tag-board-game","tag-board-games","tag-chris-cocks","tag-gina-goetter","tag-hasbro","tag-magic-the-gathering-2","tag-q4","tag-record","tag-results","tag-revenue","tag-wizards-of-the-coast"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5921"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5928,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5921\/revisions\/5928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}