There is no larger conglomerate in board gaming than Asmodee. They have gobbled up so many companies that it’s hard to keep track of which publishers they own. Well, today a bombshell of news was dropped by none other than the now-retired publisher of Stronghold Games, Stephen Bounocore. He posted on his Facebook page (and Twitter) this morning that Asmodee is close to being sold by the VC company that owns them.
So far, details have been a bit scarce, but we were able to find some information on the French site Gus & Co. Through a bit of a game of telephone, it appears that the AGEFI (paywall), a French media group specializing in finance, relayed information from Unquote (again, paywall) that PAI Partners have reportedly decided to resell Asmodee.
“PAI Partners is a French investment fund that currently owns Asmodee. They bought it in 2018 for 1.2 billion euros from Eurazeo, another investment fund, which had bought Asmodee in 2014 for around 143 million euros.”
If Pai Partners is able to secure the 2 Billion euros they are seeking for Asmodee, that would represent an 800 Million profit in only 3 years. Pai Partners has reportedly engaged the bank Goldman Sachs and Natixis Partners to help sell Asmodee.
There is no telling how a sale of Asmodee might affect the board game industry. They own so many publishers and even distribute games themselves. Fantasy Flight, Z-Man, Gamegenic, Days of Wonder, Catan, Repos Prod, Lookout, and others are all under the umbrella of Asmodee Games.
They destroyed so much…and now the price to entry ensures it goes to being destroyed even further.