It’s often hard to imagine that the card we play, the pieces we collect and the dice we roll are part of $3.07bn industry. Well it could be hard to imagine, if you weren’t about to read this list. We’re going to look into these behemoths – the top 10 best selling board game companies who they are, what they do, and what they’re best known for.
10) Iello: $7million
French Board game producers Iello started out as Cartagogo in 2004 (I think it’s a better name personally). They began initially as professional resellers of collectible card games. They’re best known by the French as the 2006 distributors of Yu-Gi-Oh right when the game was booming. In the board game landscape they are well known for developing King of Tokyo. They kick off the start of our list with a revenue of $7 million, they’re still a relatively young company and only started developing their own games in 2010. They do very well in the French domestic market as well as a smattering of success in the US; certainly one to look out for moving forward.
9) Czech Games Edition (CGE): $13 million
Founded in 2007 this Prague based business is best known for Codenames, everyone’s favourite party game. The game is critically acclaimed winning German game of the year 201.6 This propelled it and the business of 28 people into the stratosphere of Board game celebrity. It’s very hard to find boardgame sales stats for individual titles, but as far as this expert can tell codenames (and its various editions) sell between 5000-8000 copies per month in the US Amazon Store alone, so we can see where CGE makes the majority of their sales from.
8) Rio Grande Games: $21.4 million
Jay Tummelson founded Rio Grande Games in 1998. The business primarily imported and translates foreign language German-style board games, however since its founding the company has gone on to publish over 350 games. Known best for Dominion, Carcassonne and Puerto Rico, Rio Grande Games has forever stamped their significance on the US boarding game landscape. Ironically they also reverse their approach i.e. they now create games in English, export them to partners in other countries and then help with the translations over there – funny how things go full circle.
7) Grand Prix International: $24 million
This business is best known for producing Bananagrams, but did they actually invent it? No. this company actually makes board games for you. So you’ve got a board game idea? These guys will project manage it, graphic design it, product source and mass produce it for you. Start to finish the process looks to take around 130 days this is split into preproduction 45 days, manufacturing 60 days and freight forwarding 30 days. You’ll need a lot of money upfront to deal with this business though because the minimum order quaintly (MOQ) is 2500 units (lets stick to a smaller game to start).
6) Stonemaier Games: $24.7 million
Board game geniuses Jamey Stegmaier and co-founder Alan Stone are owners of Stonemaier Games, Stone-Maier, get it? These wizards of the genre are responsible for games such as Scythe, Wingspan and Tapestry. Steigmaier is well known for his love of crowdfunding, so much so that he has even written a A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide. Scythe is their greatest crowdfunding achievement – they initially intended to raise $33,000 and ended up raising $1.81 million. The business is run by 3 full-time employees (Jamey, Joe, and Alex) and 2 part-time employees (Alan and Morten), but they have around 100 contractors who help them carry out day-to-day activities. Considering the size of their operation they’re punching above their weight in a big way. Founded in August 2012 this business is the youngest on the list.
5) Ludofact: $49 million
Ludofact are a well-known German board game manufacturer who specialise in the complete game cycle: Production, assembly, packaging and logistics and have operated for the last 25 years. Today, in the present the company produced 70,000 board games per day, 350,000 games and puzzles a week and up to 17 million board games and puzzles a year. In total Ludofact supports the activities of 200 games publishers worldwide.
4) Goliath Games: $66 million
Founded in 1980 in the land windmills (Netherlands) Goliath games is best known for Rummikub which carries the business like an overburdened pack mule, although I’d love to play Burger Party sometime. Nono, jokes aside Triominoes also sells very well. Everyone’s favourite Majong-Rummy hybrid has sold about £50 million copies worldwide since its creation in 1977. It’s actually very similar to the card game Machiavelli which you can find here at the Card Game Connoisseur.
3) Ravensburger: $525 million
A huge jump into the 9 figure annual revenue businesses begins with Ravensburger. These actual mavericks are best known for their jigsaw puzzles. Boardgame-wise – if you wish to nit-pick – they are the publishers of Disney’s Villinaous if that keeps you happy. Coming in as the oldest company on this list created by Otto Maier of Germany in 1883 this year is also the same as when Oxygen was first liquefied – if you’re intrested in that at all.
2) Asmodee Editions: $1.27 billion
Seemingly achieving almost triple annual sales to their German counterparts, French founded Asmodee has gone though electric growth since It was founded in 1995. Most famous for games such as Ticket to ride, Catan and Pandemic these little baddies sold 39 million games in 2020. I will admit that I was one of the 39 mil club as my Ticket to Ride Europe edition saw thorough use during Coronavirus. They also apparently own the rights to trade Pokémon cards so if you happen to net a “Dracaufeu première edition”, you know who to thank.
1) Hasbro: $5.1 billion revenue
Titans of the field American based Hasbro is well known for its Transformers, GI Joe and Power rangers among other toys. They are the largest producer of tabletop games in the world, best known for Monopoly – which also appears on our top 10 best selling board games of all time – Cluedo and Magic the gathering. The business began as Hassenfeld Brothers in 1923 and from 1923-1942 they didn’t even sell toys, specialising in pencil cases and school supplies. Hasbro started making waves in the board game biz in 1984 when they acquired the Milton Bradley Company bringing Game of life to the business. Following this trend they didn’t create Monopoly, but rather acquire it from Tonka Corp in 1991 for a staggering $468 million – that’s about $1 Billion accounting for inflation – watch out, it will probably be $2 billion in 2023 with the way inflation is going at the moment (topical joke).
Conclusion
To conclude we can see that there is clear domination from US developers which is unsurprising given the economic powerhouse that the US. The list is slightly Skewed as Asmodee is primarily a board games company whereas Hasbro is primarily a toys company, which also sells board games. Then again to date monopoly has sold almost 300 million copies since its inception, Asmodee’s best selling game, Catan, has sold around 32 million copies barely a tenth. I found it interesting that we had Developers from Holland, Germany, Czechia and France also on the list. So it seems like the top 10 best selling board game companies can be from all around the world!
