I wondered if we could use the report to figure out D&D revenues because later in the report it breaks things down by segment. It calls out Magic by itself and Tabletop Gaming as a whole. It's just simple subtraction, right? This is 4Q 2023.

Page 32 - Magic the Gathering = 258.3
Page 33 - Tabletop Gaming = 265.6

So Tabletop (265.6) minus Magic (258.3) = D&D at 7.3 million dollars for 4Q 2023?

I'd need a link to the report, but I'd suspect that Magic and TTRPGs are considered separate items and so it's far more likely to be...

MtG $258.3 million + TTRPG $265.8 million = $524.1 million combined sales.

Remember, this would be the quarter when all the BG3 video game royalties came in (reportedly $90 million for WotC based on other reports) so the idea that D&D only made $7 million when it had a $90 million windfall is extremely unlikely.

That would put TTRPGS at $175.8 million without the BG3 royalties... and a chunk of that is D&DBeyond subscriptions (no hard numbers, but if 10% of its users were subscribers that's $40-60 million annually before content purchases).

You're now sitting at a bit over $100 million with books at $35 each at Walmart and you're looking at maybe 3 million units sold (most of which are probably PHBs for new players, replacements for lost/destroyed ones or a few looking at the 2024 release and wanting some backups in hard copy form).

Here's a screenshot of the financial report (not the powerpoint). All of WotC's tabletop gaming combined was $265.6 million. So the OP's initial math is correct and D&D as a brand pulls in $7.3 last quarter or about $28-$30 million a year. For a long time people have speculated what percentage of WotC's tabletop game revenue is D&D and now it looks like it is just 3%. No wonder Hasbro doesn't care.

And it's crazy to think that one D&D video game makes more money for Hasbro than tabletop D&D does in three to four years combined. And every cent of the Baldur's Gate money is profit whereas most of the revenue from tabletop D&D is countered by the cost to write and print the books.

https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2023-financial

Does D&DBeyond have about 2 million users? That, at least, is suggested by the following video, which also shows how far BG3 surpasses D&DBeyond. It remains to be seen how many of these users, most of whom aren't subscribers, will be willing to pay for WotC's upcoming VTT.

Late last year, Teos Abadía (of Alphastream) had a post studying some other stats about D&D, notably BookScan data, and a Forbes estimate that D&D earned $100 to $150 million in 2022. That seemed high based on the book data, but the international market was a big unknown.

https://alphastream.org/index.php/2023/10/13/estimating-dds-revenue/

The book sales will have dropped a lot with the announcement of the next edition. It's a given that at the tail end of an old edition, sales will be low. The huge question is what fraction of current players will adopt the new edition. Even relatively unsuccessful editions like 2nd and 4th are a huge windfall, but the big question is what effect it will have on the brand.

Quote from: jhkim on February 15, 2024, 12:58:02 PM
Late last year, Teos Abadía (of Alphastream) had a post studying some other stats about D&D, notably BookScan data, and a Forbes estimate that D&D earned $100 to $150 million in 2022. That seemed high based on the book data, but the international market was a big unknown.

The problem is the way Hasbro reports their revenue. They sometimes combine D&D tabletop with MTG tabletop to get WotC's revenue. Other times, they break out the revenue by "Brand Portfolio" which includes all licensed products including t-shirts, board games and video games. So it is a huge problem to assume that revenue from D&D as a brand (which is what Forbes is talking about) comes entirely from sales of tabletop gaming books.

In the final paragraph of the linked report from alphastream, they say, "The above estimate that D&D's revenue for all of 5E is $510-693M or $28-38M annually." Those annual number match almost exactly to the per year estimate we get from looking at the recent quarterly report.

But, if Forbes is right in that D&D earns $100 million per year as a brand but only $30 million a year as a tabletop game, you can see just how unimportant the RPG portion of D&D actually is. This is something I've been saying for a long time.

That's very surprising to me if true without any hidden caveats unknown to us...  especially so once you consider that they are far and away the big dog in the industry at the peak of their popularity since the 1980s and practically the only ones with mainstream recognition as a game (as opposed to an already mainstream title from another industry like LOTR licensing out a game).   They've got a long way to go then to get to their vaunted "billion dollar brand" goal they stated a while back.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 15, 2024, 11:53:43 AM
Here's a screenshot of the financial report (not the powerpoint). All of WotC's tabletop gaming combined was $265.6 million. So the OP's initial math is correct and D&D as a brand pulls in $7.3 last quarter or about $28-$30 million a year. For a long time people have speculated what percentage of WotC's tabletop game revenue is D&D and now it looks like it is just 3%. No wonder Hasbro doesn't care.

And it's crazy to think that one D&D video game makes more money for Hasbro than tabletop D&D does in three to four years combined. And every cent of the Baldur's Gate money is profit whereas most of the revenue from tabletop D&D is countered by the cost to write and print the books.

https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2023-financial

Thanks for the link/data.

I stand corrected; they put the digital revenue into its own category and the MtG number and TTRPG number were from two separate tables.

So, not only is the $7.3 million for D&D tabletop correct, we know from other sources that the BG3 royalties account for $90m of the $97.6m in sales. Given the prior year was  $72.3m; that suggests also a MASSIVE falloff in the digital revenue from other sources as well (i.e. cancellations of D&DBeyond over the OGL disaster last year probably hit them MUCH harder than they've admitted... explaining their complete cave on that initiative with the 5e SRD now under Creative Commons).

ETA: to explain my initial thoughts; $7.3 million seemed impossibly low given the $90 million in royalties and an assumption that the OGL debacle might have shaved 10% off D&DBeyond's estimated $60+ million per year in subscriptions and purchases which together would be $150+ million for the year... with the assumption that all of that was lumped under "TTRPG revenue" showing roughly $100 million in revenue from the rest of the line.

With the actual data now in hand this instead paints a devastating picture where D&DBeyond lost 90% of its subscribers and book sales collapsed down to modern comic book circulation numbers.

No wonder they laid practically everyone off, won't even get a new MM out until next year, and made a VTT distribution deal with Foundry (something they have zero reason to do if they their "walled garden" was going to work). This is pushing into the "put out a single commemorative product every five years to keep the trademark fresh" territory if it isn't there already.

As a follow-up to the initial post take a look at what happens if you do the same thing with the full year numbers on the next few pages of the report:

Page 35 - Full Year 2023 - Magic the Gathering = 1085.8
Page 36 - Full Year 2023 - Tabletop Gaming = 1072.5

So if we subtract Magic (1085.8 ) from Tabletop Gaming as a whole (1072.5) we should get D&D's net revenue for the year = negative 13.3 million dollars!

Negative? Yes. Please check my math. See if I'm reading the report correctly.

It looks to me like D&D (the tabletop game) LOST $13.3 million in 2023.

Quote from: Bones McCoy on February 15, 2024, 11:35:36 PM
As a follow-up to the initial post take a look at what happens if you do the same thing with the full year numbers on the next few pages of the report:

Page 35 - Full Year 2023 - Magic the Gathering = 1085.8
Page 36 - Full Year 2023 - Tabletop Gaming = 1072.5

This is what I was talking about. Hasbro releases these numbers in a way that it is impossible to decipher what's happening. The number for Magic The Gathering is the revenue by brand, so it includes MTG: The Arena. The number for Tabletop gaming is just the physical products and doesn't include MTG: The Arena nor does it include D&D Beyond (see the note at the bottom of page 18).

This means that my calculations were incorrect.

The best we can do is compare the total for WotC total for 2023 which is $1,457.6 and subtract the total for MTG which was $1,085.8 which leaves $371.8 but this includes all products for WotC that aren't MTG, so things like Baldur's Gate, D&D Beyond, and all the various D&D boardgames on top of whatever the tabletop RPG number actually is.

In addition, we don't know if the brand revenue for MTG includes items that aren't considered revenue for WotC such as t-shirts or action figures.

Latest earnings call:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hasbro-q1-2024-earnings-call-164518554.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZW53b3JsZC5vcmcv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHAQVO30snNQCJm4GSToRptm2zCiWDl5PtdcExukSViXZsez77nAC9_qFOxXXXoNlJ-C1g3LkpG1OqKaQ_-_O9kHHV6teOWfjsKyb9SuqT2xg5-VsuviwkSCQGvecU1n_XYQwT27-p0TqlLcxRrXQRS6z8KHRbZFnPvZM7lNi5xU

The Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming segment's revenues totaled $316.3 million, up 8.2% from $339 million in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted operating margin was 38.8% compared with 26% in the year-ago quarter.

Hasbro's overall revenues: -24%
Digital and licensed game sales: +14%
Overall tabletop gaming: +5%
Magic the Gathering: +4%

Further:

In the presentation it states that D&D franchise sales (so tabletop+digital+licensing) was up 3% from Q1 of last year. That isn't much data to go on as we don't know if that money is from game sales or Baldur's Gate.

Speaking of, D&D was mentioned briefly in the remarks by Kern Kapoor, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

While the success of Baldur's Gate 3 is in a league of its own, we see a long-term opportunity to
leverage the richness of D&D across more games – in Q1 we signed new licensing agreements
with Resolution Games, best known for the VR game Demeo, as well as Gameloft, makers of
Disney Dreamlight Valley, both to build within the D&D universe.

And to celebrate D&D's 50th anniversary we executed new partnerships with Lego, Converse,
and Blackmilk apparel. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Red Dragon's Tale is a 3,700 piece fan favorite
that combines the building fun of Lego and the rich world building of D&D. I can't wait to build my
own.

There is no mention in any of the reports of 6e or the re-release of 5e and the only mention of the 50th anniversary is in reference to licensed clothes and a Lego set.

As far as the new video game licenses, "Disney Dreamlight Valley" is shovelware crap, but Demeo is 90% VR D&D session already. So that seems like a good fit. Here's some gameplay I found (skip the first couple minutes):

Quote from: hedgehobbit on April 25, 2024, 10:12:14 AMIn the presentation it states that D&D franchise sales (so tabletop+digital+licensing) was up 3% from Q1 of last year. That isn't much data to go on as we don't know if that money is from game sales or Baldur's Gate.

Speaking of, D&D was mentioned briefly in the remarks by Kern Kapoor, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

While the success of Baldur's Gate 3 is in a league of its own, we see a long-term opportunity to
leverage the richness of D&D across more games – in Q1 we signed new licensing agreements
with Resolution Games, best known for the VR game Demeo, as well as Gameloft, makers of
Disney Dreamlight Valley, both to build within the D&D universe.

And to celebrate D&D's 50th anniversary we executed new partnerships with Lego, Converse,
and Blackmilk apparel. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Red Dragon's Tale is a 3,700 piece fan favorite
that combines the building fun of Lego and the rich world building of D&D. I can't wait to build my
own.

There is no mention in any of the reports of 6e or the re-release of 5e and the only mention of the 50th anniversary is in reference to licensed clothes and a Lego set.

As far as the new video game licenses, "Disney Dreamlight Valley" is shovelware crap, but Demeo is 90% VR D&D session already. So that seems like a good fit. Here's some gameplay I found (skip the first couple minutes):

The jerking on the camera makes me want to vomit.  Fucking kill that shit with a fire.

Has tabletop gaming as a whole declined? How many gamers are there and what are they playing?

Between RPGs, board games, and war games, there's a lot of players.  There's a messing thing going on right now where the blue hairs are trying to turn game stores into lefty coffee clubs but home games are on the rise.  People want the game and the social contact through the game, they just don't want the sanctimony.

Take a look at what is going on with Battletech with their community rep and the player base.  In short, the player base has had it with Catalyst Game Labs and have started to boycott buying new BT stuff.  Instead, BT piracy us way up, EBay is selling old BT stuff all the time, and home brew mechs are all the rage in many BT local meet-ups.

This is a thing that's happening all over.  Many games are selling well and many people are in great games but the big publishers are shitting on their customers.  Of course they are seeing dips in revenue.  OTOH, look on Drivethru and look ate what is hot.

Even 5e is doing well, just not WOTC.  The amount of third party stuff that's selling is staggering.