SuperData Research

Trading Card Game Industry White Paper

As novel as virtual goods may sound, their underlying economics are not. To understand the fundamentals of the phenomenon of selling a user base incremental upgrades and special items, SuperData Research and To Be Continued teamed up to write Trading Card Game Industry: From the T to the C to the G.

This white paper covers the main components of trading card games as well as the basic concepts, a concise history on the overall industry and its trends, characteristics of the customer base, the secondary market and key brands. In addition, it discusses the overall industry’s revenues, its distribution model, current issues and opportunities and its relevant companies.

Ever since Pokémon emerged from the obscure hobby market to become a big box retail phenomenon, Trading Card Games (TCGs) became a popular mainstream form of entertainment. Especially among a younger demographic, TCGs have grown into a pervasive form of contemporary game play. Just in North America alone, sales are estimated to be in the neighborhood of $800 million for 2008; sales that are fueled by four different animated television shows based on TCG brands.

Outside of traditional media, the emergence of massive multi-player games has coincided with an in- creased interest in TCG. The immensely popular World of Warcraft (Blizzard/Activision) with its 11 million subscribers worldwide, has had substantial success with its TCG spin-off. In the free-to-play game space, titles such as Club Penguin (Disney) and MapleStory (Nexon) also enjoy the success of their offline TCGs. Sony’s recently released Free Realms also features a TCG, based on the virtual universe. With such large compa- nies backing the development of TCGs, we figured that 2009 was a good moment to shine some light on the TCG industry. It offers both an opportunity to expand on existing intellectual property and a possibility for (young) audiences to play with their friends even while offline (e.g. on the playground, during recess at school).

This report is the handiwork of a group of avid trading card gamers and professionals, who dedicate a lot of their time to developing and playing TCGs. All of us subscribe to game play that is as much social as it is exciting. We hope our efforts are of use to the reader and invite anyone who feels we’ve missed anything, or has relevant information, to contact us. This white paper serves as an introduction on the topic and we look forward to a productive conversation with industry affiliates and fans alike.

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