The gaming and esports industry continues to grow, much of the growth comes from company acquisitions. Continued expansion came from acquiring brands but in the history of gaming, which company acquisitions are the most expensive?
Most Expensive Acquisitions
Using Crunchbase to gather the data, BusinessFinancing.co.uk found the five most expensive acquisitions in the gaming industry. Leading it off is Tencent, the biggest gaming conglomerate in the world. As the biggest investor, Tencent spent $11.5 billion with only three purchases. Buying Supercell, Leyou, and Riot Games warranted the over $10 billion spend. And according to recent court documents, the corporation receives an estimated $19.4 billion in revenue with $6.3 billion in profits.
Following Tencent is Microsoft, which spent $11 billion on ZeniMax Media, Mojang Studios, and Rare, Inc. so far. Although it didn’t follow through, Microsoft even almost bought Discord for $10 billion. In third for the biggest gaming acquisitions comes Electronic Arts, which spent $7.8 billion on seven purchases throughout its years in the industry.
Image credits to Business Finance.
Gaming Acquisition Boom
Acquisition price didn’t always hit the billion-dollar mark either. Before 2010, billion-dollar deals in gaming didn’t exist. But when online gaming became common and the more popular way for players to participate. The boom truly hit after 2013 when Tencent purchased Supercell for $8.6 billion, the most expensive gaming acquisition. Microsoft’s taking over ZeniMax for $7.5 follows as the next highest priced. Most recently, Nuverse purchased Moonton for $4 billion.
Interestingly, eight of the biggest acquisitions are for mobile games, showcasing how big the mobile gaming and esports scene truly is. Data like this is extremely valuable when looking at the potential of the gaming and esports industry, especially when seeing the size of previous gaming acquisitions.
Written by Justin Amin
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